EP 59: How We Got the Bible

One phrase that I've often heard is that Christianity was born

with a Bible and its cradle, which is really unusual.

And so from its very beginning, Christians had texts that they

considered to be sacred and important, and they knew from

those texts what God was doing in the world.

And they also used those texts to think about what God is now

doing in the world through the figure of Jesus.

Hey friends and welcome back to the Grace Church Podcast.

I'm your host Whitney Manus and I'm here with my Co host Scott

Mozingo. Everyone say hey Scott.

Hey, Whitney. Good to see you.

And in the studio today we have a returning alumnus of the

podcast. He knows a lot of really cool

things and explains them very well and sometimes gets paid for

it. He is a phenomenal tour guide

and he has a voice made for podcasting and might put Scott

and I out of a job anytime, anytime, anytime.

That's right. He is.

Doctor Tim Wardle, welcome back. We're glad to have you.

Thanks. Thanks for asking me back.

Absolutely. And just for the people who

haven't met you yet, will you just do a quick intro of

yourself? You are a member here at Grace,

so where are you a member, how long you've been a member, and

anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself?

Yeah. So my wife Sherry and I moved

here 14 years ago and we quickly settled on Grace.

We've been attending Grace for 1314 years.

I have three daughters. They've all grown up here, and

I'm currently an RTS leader, reading through scripture leader

here at Pelham, and my day job as I teach at Furman University.

I'm a professor of New Testament.

And because of that job, I get to travel to the Middle East now

and again and take people to Israel and Jordan and other

Middle East countries. And it's a pleasure to both work

there and attend. Grace, That's awesome.

So Tim, this is spring semester. We're getting close to the end.

Just give us a taste. What?

What classes are you teaching right now?

I just finished teaching before I drove over here this

afternoon, a class called Paul's Life and Thought, So I think we

just finished looking at the letter to the Romans.

And then I'm also teaching a class called Jerusalem, One

City, 3 Face. So looking at the historical

development of the city through the lens of Jews, Christians and

Muslims. OK, you also teach a good bit of

CS Lewis. I do teach a class on CS Lewis.

It's the first year writing seminar, so for incoming first

year students, for freshmen, I get to read CS Lewis with them

and they get to write about it. Fantastic.

So cool, all the fun stuff. I will throw my roll dens in

here, just I feel obligated to. And Tim, you were last on this

podcast 2 1/2 years ago and really did an incredible job

just summarizing some of the more recent history of Israel in

under an hour. And we, we encourage y'all to go

back and listen to that if you haven't already.

But at least for today, we'll try to give you an easier topic

if we can. Tim gets to pop around our

campuses and guests teach just on various topics.

And he recently got to teach in RTS about how we came to have

the Bible that we read today. So we really just wanted to have

you share some of that on the podcast.

But before we dive deeper into that, you, you do just spend a

lot of time with Scripture, hopefully in your personal

reading, but also for your job as a teacher, as a professor.

And I would love to know, just as you spend time in the word,

does it ever get wrote or tedious for you?

And just if so, like, how do you keep coming back to Scripture

with fresh eyes and looking to learn something new when you

already do know so much about it?

Yeah, that's a great question. And so, I mean, the honest

answer is yes, sometimes it does get wrote and tedious.

And so I do have to sometimes take a step back and think this

is the word of the word of God that he has for me right now.

And to come sit down, open my Bible and think, I am not a

professor right now. I'm not AI mean.

I am these things. So I'm not a father right now.

I'm not like I am here to hear to hear what what God has to

speak to me, what he got to speaking to me through these

words on the page. And I have found that I just

have to be humble. Really.

There are there are lots of times when I have to kind of

take my professor hat off when I'm reading because when I read

the Bible, sometimes I think, how would I teach this?

And that's the wrong question to be asking if I'm not teaching

it, if I want to know like what does God have for me?

And so I have to consciously kind of say, I'm going to put

those questions to the side and I'm going to open this up and

I'm going to see what what God has for me today.

It's a really helpful practice for me to be reading through the

Bible, which is why I've signed up to do RTS for the second time

right now because even though I do teach the Bible, I sometimes

struggle to daily read the Bible devotionally or, or for myself.

And so it's I just need these habits and I need the

accountability to do it. Yeah, and I love that our RTS

groups have been, I've just heard so many great things.

And it is the the doing it in community and having a little

bit of that extra accountability, but just to take

it in its entirety is so impactful.

So y'all heard it here first. Tim Wardle has to go to RTS too,

so there's no excuse for y'all not to do it.

OK, let's take a dive into this idea of where we got the Bible.

I mean, big topic, lots of things we could talk about.

There are around 40 different authors over the span of 1600

years that it was written in. And so I mean, where would you

like to start? Like how we have a physical

Bible in front of us today. Our church uses the NLT

translation, but where did all of that even begin to start

coming together? One phrase that I've often heard

is that Christianity was born with a Bible and its cradle,

which is really unusual. And so from its very beginning,

Christians had texts that they considered to be sacred and

important, and they knew from those texts what God was doing

in the world. And they also used those texts

to think about what God is now doing in the world through the

figure of Jesus. So the biblical authors are

describing events that they either saw in person or that

they heard about. And so the Old Testament will be

what Christians call the Old Testament, Jews call their Bible

because they don't have a New Testament.

It's it's a long period of time that the biblic authors are

talking about. So if you were to start with

Abraham, because that's dateable, at least in my mind.

So 1800 BC before that you've got Adam and Eve, you've got

Noah. Those are important stories, but

they're hard to date because it's so, so long ago.

So starting with if I start with Abraham and Genesis 11 and then

moving forward, you're 1800, Abraham about 400, you got Ezra,

Nehemiah. And that's kind of the, the

range for the Old Testament. So a long time, right?

Yeah, centuries and centuries. People are not writing that

whole time, but by the middle of that time here, they're starting

to write down their history and. Before that, just oral history.

The stories around. Fireplace everyone's.

That's right. It's being passed on orally

mostly because, well, early on, writing wasn't really even

invented. It wasn't the thing, but even

when it was, most people were illiterate.

Even in the time of Jesus, most people were illiterate.

And so the way people learned in the ancient world was by

hearing. And so they got really good at

hearing and remembering and passing on those stories.

So when I think of passing on stories, I think of the

telephone game and I'm, you know, you're bad at it.

Just around a circle in 2 minutes.

It's awful, right? But that's not how the ancient

world worked. They were.

They're really good at remembering and passing things

on because that's what they had. Yeah.

Like our attention span is so short and we talked about that

whether it's the Internet or social media or, you know, we

try to get our podcast into 30 minutes so that people will sit

and listen to it. I don't.

Know take away your phone and think about how much more time

you would have to remember to learn.

And if that was your entertainment, too, like, we

have so many entertainment options now, but back then, you,

at the end of your day, everyone got together and just hung out.

And Grandpa, tell us a story. Yeah.

So at a certain point, and it's hard to know exactly when people

started writing down the stories.

And so there are multiple authors over a long period of

time still. But I think of like maybe the

year 1000 with King David, it's the writing started before that,

but it's really accelerating time.

And in the time of the kings of Israel and then in the time of

exile, so like in the five hundreds BC, seems a lot more

was written. And so there's just periods of

time where there's writing their stories are happening all along.

And so by the time you get to like 403 hundred BC, the books

of the Old Testament are written, OK, but it spans, yeah,

you like you said, thirteen, 1400 years, multiple authors,

but it's the same God who is behind all of it, right?

So God is prompting people to write things down.

And then when it is written down, then people are copying

it. But most, most of the time

they're hearing it and passing it on.

But there are written records. So it's being passed on in

written form as well. And was there any need to, like,

decide what was included at that point?

Were there lots of other different stories that we've

just kind of left out from the Old Testament specifically?

Or was everyone pretty clear? Like this is just our history,

it's obvious what should be in here.

You know, that is a great question that's really hard to

answer. So I'm reading in RTS right now.

We're reading through, we just finished reading through Second

Kings and at the end of every King's life, it'll say, and if

you want to know more about this king, you can read the Annals of

the Kings of Judah or Israel. Like we don't have those books

anymore. So there were things that were

written that we don't have, but there are a lot of things are

written that we do have, right? So the things that we read in

our Old Testament are really pretty much all of the Jewish

texts that were written in that time period.

Jewish is anyway Israelite or Jewish texts.

Sure. After the year of 400 or between

like say the year 4 to 300 BC and, and the time of Jesus, like

0 zero. There are a lot of other Jewish

texts that are written that are not included in our Bible.

And so part of that is they're not as old, but also a lot of

those texts are reflection upon what we now call the Old

Testament books. So they're reading those books,

they're thinking about it, they're maybe rewriting the

story in different way or they're like they're reflecting

in different ways. And that was never seen as quite

the same level of authority as the books that we now call the

Old Testament. OK.

Tim, when you think about manuscripts of Old Testament

writings, what do we have? A lot.

We have a lot, but not old a lot like not a lot of the old ones.

So the earliest ancient texts that we have of the Bible are

from the Dead Sea Scrolls. So these are written between the

year, say 200 BC and like the year or 50AD.

So they they're pretty well all the Qumran or Dead Sea Scroll

texts, they're all pre Christian.

Yeah. So there's nothing Christian in

them. But every Old Testament book,

there's evidence of every Old Testament book in the Dead Sea

Scrolls, except for Esther. That's the only one that was

never like no portion of Esther was ever found.

But everything else that you can tell that these texts are

important because they're preserving them, they're copying

them. And that's why the discovery of

the Dead Sea Scrolls is maybe the greatest archaeological

discovery. It was so important because

before, prior to the discover the Dead Sea Scrolls, so texts

from say let's say 100 BC, the earliest Old Testament text that

we had were from like the year 1080 roughly, right?

And so you could move 1000 years backwards and you can say, oh,

this is what they're reading in the year 100.

This is what the text said in the year 1000.

And that's really, really close, right?

So you, you get the sense that there's continuity.

The scribes are doing their work very faithfully and carefully.

Yeah. Can you describe that process

for us just a little bit? So how scribes worked?

Yeah. So the scribal process is such

that like it, we live in a day and age when we have a printing

press, right? And so if you want to get a copy

of a book, you just print 500 copies and you know you're good

to go. And they're all going to be

exactly the same. When scribes worked, they had to

be really careful to see the text that's in front of them and

then copy it. And so they have their ink,

they've got a quill, and they are writing, but they have to

look up, they have to look down. They have to look up, they look

down because they're looking at the text they're looking,

they're writing. They're looking at the text

they're writing. And so there are small

differences among every text that we have from anything in

nature. Well, not just biblical, any

ancient text, there going to be small differences.

Most of them are just like articles here and there.

There's a missing and the isn't there, like some of a few

differences are a little more important.

But by and large, scribes are really good at what they did.

I always do this assignment with my students.

A New Testament, Whitney did this where I gave them a 5

minute assignment where they had to copy something that was on

the on the screen. They had to copy it down in

front of them and half the class gets it wrong every single time.

And it's just to show how difficult scribal work was.

But they're trained at it, they're good at it.

And then, so let's say like Scott, you, you write a text and

then you, you write it and then I come along and I'm copying

what you wrote. And then Whitney comes along and

she copies what I wrote, right. And then you can, I mean, if

you're lucky, you have all three texts and you can compare them.

Sometimes you don't have them. And so the scribe then just test

is like, OK, this is what it was.

And you just keep going. But it's, it's copying and

copying and copying and copying. So then for the New Testament,

we really got a New Testament. But the New Testament, we have

5000, more than 5000 Greek manuscripts.

The New Testament exist just because so much copying went on

and then the New Testament translated into so many

different languages that there's there's just so many copies of

the New Testament, more than any other book in the in the world.

We have so many copies of the New Testament because Christians

cared about it so much that they were copying it and preserving

it. Wow.

So then let's jump back then to the New Testament and just kind

of take us through how we arrived at those those books.

Sure. So by the time Jesus is around

in the 1st century, so let's say roughly the year 30 AD, when

Jesus is teaching, he assumes I'm going to start with the Old

Testament, then move to New Testament.

He assumes that what we now call the Old Testament, they could

call scriptures. They had different terms for it.

He just assumed this was a given, that everyone agreed that

these are the authoritative words of God.

So in John seven, he will say, as the Scripture says, and then

he'll quote, or in Luke 24, after his race from the dead, he

is walking with two other disciples on the way to Emmaus,

the road to Emmaus. And he begins to explain to

them, he says from the law or Luke says from the law, the

prophets and the Psalms, everything that was written

about himself, but everything's written about Jesus.

And in that statement of the law, the prophets and the

writings of the Psalms, those are the three sections of the

Jewish Bible. And so by the time with Jesus,

by the time in the 1st century, like, I think Jews just agreed

that these are the word, these are the texts.

These are the books that are important for us, for our faith,

for our history, for how to live.

And it was, it was not a discussion.

Like, do we believe this book? Do we not do this book?

Like they all agreed on what it was.

So then after Jesus is raised from the dead and he ascends to

heaven, early followers of Jesus are starting to want to do

things like record his words, right?

And they're, they're reflecting about what he said.

And Paul's going around teaching and he's writing letters.

And so in a very brief period of time between 50 and 100 AD, all

the books, the New Testament are written, right?

So it's very close in time to the time of Jesus.

And it's kind of this, this burst of energy almost.

Other New Testament, other Christian texts are written

after that. 9 New Testament, other Christian books are

written after that. But it's this period of time

that later Christians look back. They said these texts that were

written now are the ones that we need in addition to the Old

Testament. We need these books as well that

can teach us about who Jesus is, why God sent Jesus, how we

should live as Christians and a whole bunch of other, you know,

reasons why they they accepted these texts as important and

authoritative. Should I keep going?

No, I think that's great. I mean, that's super helpful.

So we've got Old Testament, we have New Testament.

Old Testament is a little bit more straightforward and clear.

In the New Testament, we have a lot of writing that's happening

in a very short amount of time, and then a lot of writing that

happens after that. Can you just explain a little

bit? I mean, you mentioned that you

have Christians who are reading all of these different texts and

you mentioned some of the criteria that they're thinking

about of why these need to be added into the Bible.

Who were some of those people? Like, how do we, how did they

decide? Who gets to decide what goes in

the Bible? So for the new, this is easier

for the New Testament than the Old Testament to think about

these questions. So for the New Testament,

there's nothing called a New Testament that that phrase or

that it didn't mean any, that wouldn't mean anything until the

end of the 4th century. And so I'll jump to the end and

then I'll work backwards, right. So in the years 393 and 397 AD,

two different councils got together and said this is the

New Testament. So they decided these 27 books

are the 27 books that we are going to read in church.

We're going to consider them authoritative.

We're not going to add anything to this.

We're not going to take away from this, right?

So those are the 27 books. One of the reasons it took so

long, right? If you think between the year 50

and the year 393, that's a long time.

It's partly because Christianity was an illegal religion for most

of that time. So there was not a time when

like Christian bishops or elders or pastors could get together

and make these decisions because they would have been in danger

of arrest. And so it's only after the

Empire becomes Christian, the Roman Empire becomes Christian,

that these councils are even possible.

So the most famous council is Council of Nicaea and 3:25.

That's the earliest Christian council where bishops from all

over the world are getting together and discussing things

that are important for church doctrine and church life.

And so some of the big issues there were like, how do we talk

about Jesus, right, which is an important question, right,

because they were they were issue there.

There was controversy over was Jesus always existent?

That was he created a certain point in time.

And so they had to like wrestle with those issues.

And then several decades later, then they get around to saying,

OK, like we've been using these, what we now call the new test.

We use these texts all along, but now let's actually define it

and say, what are the texts that we are going to be using and and

call authoritative? But looking backwards, you can

say so two things. You can look at like certain

periods of time when certain collections, what we now call

the New Testament, seem to be rise to the level of Scripture.

And then you can also look at kind of criteria for like how

are they choosing? And so Paul's writing in the 50s

and 60s of the 1st 1st century. By the middle of the 2nd

century, there's already a collection of Paul's letters

that's circulating together, right?

So you know that even though Paul wrote a couple letters to

Corinth and one to Rome and a couple episodes like he's

writing these letters, somehow we don't know how someone went

and collected them all. And then they're all circulating

together as a collection. By the middle of 2nd century.

It's clear that that's happening.

And so that tells you that early Christians think what Paul said

is important, right? And they're collecting it,

they're preserving it, they're copying.

It how'd you be? How'd you like to be the guy or

gal hanging on to that collection?

Oh gosh. Carry.

Carry it with you. Of course, they probably just

thought it was another book that they had.

You know, they're just like, oh, that's, that's funny.

They're like, hey, don't give it to Johnny, he loses stuff at the

time. You can't even remember to keep

his lunch with them. That's right.

That's great. Is is interesting to think about

how or why someone decided it was important to collect Paul's

letters because it was not centralized, right?

He's sending letters to different places, sure.

And one theory that makes the most sense to me is that after

Luke wrote the book of Acts and it details Paul's itinerary and

where he went, someone said, I know he wrote a letter to us and

we are in Thessalonica. But I get apparently he went

other places too. Like let's go around and see if

he wrote letters to other places too and someone collected them.

Which would have been a really cool, unifying thing for the

early church. It would have.

I mean, it's not like people are, they're not travelling like

we are today. You're right.

But people who did travel from city to city for trade and for

different things. Not everyone travelled, but.

Which like can you put into context like from Thessalonica

to Jerusalem, like if you put that over the United States,

like about what is that distance for us?

OK, so I want to say 1000 miles but I don't know why I think

that. I can tell you that in Paul's

like 3 missionary journeys in the book of Acts, if you were to

add up all the I can use walking most for these sailing songs,

but if you're to add U all that, it's the equivalent of going

from Boston to San Francisco to Boston to San Francisco and

halfway back. OK.

Wow, it's a long ways. Yeah, I might have had one too

many lengths in there, but it's like it's like 2 1/2 times

across the country. Yeah, and it's a, it's a lot of

travel, but also it would have been customary for, especially

in such an area of trade in the Mediterranean Sea.

People are moving around all the time.

They are. There's the Roman Rd. system is

world class. There are shipping lanes that

everyone there's, you know, everyone's knows the route from

A to B and so, yeah, you could do it.

Yeah, for sure. So you have to your point,

Scott, I mean, like as those things are becoming shared and

people start to realize, I think we've mentioned as we're going

through First Corinthians, Blake had said, like they have to

figure out their issues because that's the only church around.

And then at some point they realize, oh, there's all these

other churches around and we all have to work together and figure

this thing out, especially when you're undergoing persecution

and try to find friends where you can.

So when do you think church churches would have had copies

of multiple letters? When would that have been a

reality? Any idea?

I don't really know, but I would think end of 1st century being a

second century that someone has. So someone must have said, yes,

he wrote a letter to us in Thessalonica, but if he also

went to Corinth, maybe what he said to Corinth applies to us

too, right? Because they're specific.

Like Paul writes to Thessalonica what he says there.

He does not writing other people right.

But it didn't take long for Christians to say, well, what

Paul said to us, he probably met more broadly for everyone too.

Like it's it becomes more universal.

Yeah. And you do have the the the

notion of many circular letters that were hitting very, yes,

very many churches. Yeah, and some of Paul's, like

the letter the Galatians is a circular letter because Galatia

is a region, not a city. And so Paul's writing it and

probably assuming that it's going to go from church to

church in the region of Galatia. Yeah, the Gospels are also kind

of mid 2nd century at first. I, I think Mark was the first

gospel written. People have different opinions

on which gospel is written first.

I think Mark was written first, but I, I'm convinced it was not

called the gospel according to Mark.

It was just called the gospel because it's the only one,

right, right. You don't need to call them the

gospel according to Mark, according to Matthew, according

until you have more than one, right, until you have to

differentiate. I mean, they could have done by

colors like the yellow gospel, the blue Gospel, right?

But what they did is they named them according to the author,

and you don't have to do that until you have more than one.

And so they, they started to call differentiate the Gospels

from each other by the early 2nd century, by the mid to late 2nd

century, there are lists that are mentioned and they they talk

about the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to

Matthew. Like so they're collected.

There's so all they say Paul and the Gospels are probably seen as

authoritative easily by the first, by the 2nd century, not

far removed from the time of their writing.

And they are kind of, I mean, still to this day, I think many

Christians say those are the most important parts of the New

Testament. But it's all important, right?

But those seem to have been the ones that were the important,

the earliest. They're seen as authoritative

the earliest. OK, so we have the councils that

have picked out all of our books.

How do we get the order that they're currently in?

Because it's it's not chronological and we have kind

of some different genres. But how did they decide when do

Genesis and Exodus and and so on?

Yeah. So for the Old Testament there

is this kind of three or tripartite division, the 1st 2

are easy. So the law, the first five

books, that was the oldest part and soon as the most important

part for Jews. OK partly it was the most

important because it was the oldest.

It was also like this is what God is telling us to do and how

to live. The prophets is the next

section. There's I think 8 prophetic

books in the Jewish Bible and some of the books that we would

not consider prophetic books are considered prophetic books in

the Hebrew Bible. So Joshua is a prophetic book.

The 1st and 2nd kings first like Samuel.

Those are prophetic books because there are prophets in

them. Right, OK.

And so that was a collection. It was pretty well defined

pretty early on to the last section.

Is this called the writings? It's not the miscellaneous

section, but it's kind of like there's like the other stuff.

Yeah, the rest of the story. And so things we would consider

like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, like those books are

all in there Ester. But then there's also we might

call historical books like First and Second Chronicles.

Isn't that collection Ezra and Nehemiah is in that collection?

So it's so it's kind of it kind of goes.

They were organized chronologically in the Jewish

Bible. But when Christians use the same

text, right? So Jewish Bible, Christian

Bible, in terms of the Old Testament, it's the same texts,

but they're arranged differently, right?

So Jews have this three-part, this three-part division.

Christians arranged it more like they're still the law, still

first, Torah still first. And then you have what are

called historical books, kind of sketching the history of ancient

Israel. And then you get to some of the

more, some of the poetry, some of the writing, and then the

prophets as well. They're kind of thrown in at the

end. So it's not chronological.

Like if you're reading chronological, you should be

like this past week we were reading in Second Kings.

And when you get to Hezekiah and 2nd Kings, you should put a

pause there and then go and read Isaiah because it's happening at

the same time, right? And so it's easy to miss the way

the Christians arrange their Bible, but you have to arrange

it somehow, right? And so they just the Christians

put all the prophets at the end. But the function of that is

Malachi is the last book of the Christian ordering of the of the

Old Testament. And Malachi, the last chapter is

looking forward to a figure that would come.

So when you open up the pages, the first page of Matthew in the

New Testament, it's like, oh, here's the figure who would

come, right. So it's it leads in very

organically in the New Testament.

So the Christians are very intentional on how they arrange

their Bible. For sure.

Yeah. And that, that's something I've

learned over time, that's someone didn't just throw all

these together and say good luck, figure it out.

And it is OK to have a chronological Bible and to use

it on the regular. Right.

I mean, I think about, whenever I think of chronology, I think

of the Marvel movies and how, you know, you can find all of

these lists where people have taken the movies and putting

them in chronological order and that actually can't help you.

It does track with the story. So it's not that one is right

over the other, but it's allowed.

You know you want to go that way and it can be helpful.

Whitney, to your original question to me about how do I

keep the Bible alive to me and how do I keep it personal?

I mean, one way is maybe reading it one way first time, like I

read through the way it is in the Bible and then the next time

I might read it chronologically. So the books might be in a

different order, but I start to make connections that I hadn't

made before and like, oh, that's why, right?

Because this prophet is saying this and this is what's

happening. So just to go it's Scott was

saying like you can read chronologically.

It's different. You know, there's no one way

that you have to read the Bible. That's.

Right. So going back to these councils,

I'm sure there was like they lasted like 15 minutes, right?

Everybody was in super easy agreement.

What what is what is that like we having days, long weeks, long

months, long discussions. Are there some books that are

we're skeptical about? Like take us into that a little

bit? So different councils lasted for

different amounts of time. Something like Council Nicaea, I

think it lasted months. The Emperor Constantine brings

in everyone. He sets them up at his palace

and they're they're just talking for a long time.

Other councils, I think we're shorter.

So it just kind of depend on what the topics were, how many

came, how international since it was like sometimes these

councils are more regional so they would come in for a shorter

period of time. There is no, there's not a list

from the ancient world to say this is the criteria by which we

use to decide what was in the Bible and what was not right.

That doesn't exist. But it seemed looking back where

there's like 4 different criteria that they probably use

to determine like what's authoritative and we should be

reading in church and what is just good for us to read.

But it's not it doesn't rise to the same level.

And so one of them is a they want it to be written by an

apostle, someone who is in touch with Jesus.

So the fancy were to be apostolicity, right?

So does it go back to an apostle?

Another one is Catholicity meaning not Catholic Church, but

Catholic in the meaning of its universal.

So it doesn't have universal application because that's what

the word Catholic means. And so this is where actually

Paul's letters might have had a little trouble because Paul

writes to Thessalonica something very specific.

Is it universal enough that everyone can read it, or is it

just good advice for a Thessalonica?

And so at least by the 2nd century, it seems that early

Christians are saying, no, what Paul said at Thessalonica, he

actually is really saying to all of us, right?

So it's universal in scope. Is it orthodox?

That's the third one. So does that line up with what

the Church is teaching? So there were a number of early

Christian texts that did not make a New Testament that failed

on this count. So early Christians are writing,

they're reflecting upon their faith and what they believe, but

it didn't seem like it really. And then lined up with what the

church thought was really important.

The technical term is that it does it line up with the regular

fide or the rule of faith. This is, it's kind of a circular

argument because the church is teaching what the texts are

saying and then they're, they're judging the text by what the

church is saying. So it's kind of like it's, but

it's, you could say it's a census.

Like it's, it's a, it's a synergy.

Like it's, it's a useful thing. Like the texts are saying this,

we're preaching this. And so the texting texting a

line of what we're saying, but we're getting what we're saying

from the texts. So is it Orthodox?

Does it line up with what? That's right.

So Orthodoxy, Catholicity, apostolicity and the other one

doesn't have a good city at the end, but I know and it's

probably the most important category and it's just called

like basically what what are people reading in church?

Traditional usage is sometimes what people say.

So they're probably reading things that an apostle wrote

that is Orthodox, that is Catholic and orientation.

And so that really, they probably just went, they didn't

go out and say, oh, we haven't heard of this book before, but

let's read it and see if we think it's important now that

what they're doing is they're saying what they're already

reading in church. Is it helpful for us?

And since it's stood the test of several centuries, this is the

stuff that we need to keep reading.

So is that idea where Canon or like a measuring stick comes

from? Yeah.

So you talk about an you can talk about an Old Testament

Canon, a New Testament Canon, which just means like these

texts have to measure up. They have to meet a standard,

but they have to measure up to a certain standard.

And then if it does meet that standard, then it's in.

If it doesn't meet the standard, it's out.

Got it right. One one other thing, the word

inspiration is also an important one does not seem to have been a

criteria that they used. And the reason is because so

many texts were thought to be inspired that it couldn't weed

out much because all early Christian authors that talk

about inspiration or that they, you know, they had that the Holy

Spirit was helping them write or guiding them.

And so all the texts that made in the New Testament are thought

to be inspired. Sure, right?

It would not have been considered if it wasn't thought

to be inspired. But in and of itself, I can't

weed out things because early Christians thought that God was

inspiring lots of people. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, your recent newsletter was inspired.

That's right. If you say so, we'll let you be

the judge. So.

So this sounds like the most intense work conference ever and

the longest one ever potentially.

So if something does not meet those criteria and was not

entered into the club, we still have a lot of those around.

We have them available to us. Would you like encourage us to

still read those? Like is there still benefit for

us or just like stick to your Bible?

What you got? That's that's the best stuff.

I mean, if you're, if you are modus, your reason for reading

is to say, I want to know what God has for me, then the Bible

is a great thing to read, right. But if you want to know more

about the world in which the Bible was written, if you want

to know more like what are other people thinking, what kind of

history is happening, then I think it's really, really useful

to read some of these other texts.

And so some of them would be Jewish texts that are written

between the Old and New Testament.

So First Enoch was a hugely influential book.

Jude mentions it. And so like, you know that some

of the Testament authors, they know what first, they're

familiar with Jubilees, the Testament of Moses, the wisdom

of salmon. There's a bunch of texts that

are written that are you really, really useful for understanding

Judaism in the time of Jesus, but they're not in your Bible

because they didn't quite meet the criteria of the Old for Old

or New Testament. They're also a bunch of

Christian texts that are written after the New Testament and some

of them probably in the same time.

Like First Climate is really old.

The Epistle of Barnabas is really old.

So there's a whole collection called the Apostolic Fathers.

It's really early to mid 2nd century Christian texts.

Really useful for reading if you want to know what Christians are

saying and doing and thinking really early on.

There's a bunch of texts too that Christians said no, you

probably shouldn't read these. So an example that hits some of

the criteria but not the others. So the Gospel of Peter was a

gospel that was written 2nd century text.

So when an early Christian went to his Bishop, Bishop Serapian

and Antioch and said, I just I found this Gospel Peter, can I

read it? And the Bishop said it's by

Peter. Sure.

And then we're told like a couple months later Serapian

reads the Gospel Peter and he sends a note to the guy saying

don't read it. Yeah.

Because although it claims to be by Peter, it's not by Peter and

it does not meet the standard of orthodoxy.

It is not teaching what we're teaching in church.

So there were certain things that ruled out of bounds.

Even if Apostle was said to have written, in this case E Peter

didn't write it, but it carried the name of Peter OK.

And so real quick, the a lot of the intertestamental books are

included in the Catholic Bible. So yes.

What we know is the the. Apocrypha.

So some of them are. Not all of them are, but some of

them are. There's a collection of what?

Like it's 10:00-ish, I forget the exact #10 to 12 books that

are in the Catholic Bible, not in the Protestant Bible.

Reason for that most likely is the Old Testament is written in

Hebrew and about the year 200 ish BC it was translated into

Greek. So now there's two versions of

the Old Testament. We call it the Old Testament,

right? There's a Hebrew version and a

Greek version. And then all the

intertestamental books, like the, some of the apocryphal

books, they're written in Greek. They're not written in Hebrew.

So some of them are just added to the Septuagint.

They become part of that. And so as people later on are

reading the Greek version of the Old Testament, not the Hebrew

version, they are seeing these texts in there.

And so like, oh, these are, these are part of the Bible as

well. And so up until the Reformation,

those, some of those books like First and 2nd Maccabees and

Tobit and Judith and a number of others, they're seen as biblical

books. But then in the Reformation,

some of the Protestants went, they learned Hebrew, they went

back and run. They're like, oh, but these

books are not in the Hebrew Bible.

They're not in what Jews are reading.

So we probably shouldn't read them either.

And so then Protestants kind of remove those from their Bible.

So they're in the Catholic Bible, but not in the.

Protestants. So it really has more to do with

language, which is the Greek language and the you mentioned

Septuagint, that is the Greek version of the Old Testament,

yes. So there's some extra credit

reading if if you want to put it that way, but you know, the

Bible is the Bible and that's definitely where to start.

That's definitely where we want to be getting just our daily

reading, our daily mana from. Do you want to say it that way?

But last kind of question, just to see if we can bring this

home. I mean, I, I kind of love to ask

this question a little bluntly, like why, why do we Care now?

You know, if, if y'all love history, I know you are in this

and, and loving every minute of it.

But for someone who is like, OK, I, I'll read my Bible, I'm good.

I don't know that I really need all the history, all the

background. Thanks though.

But I do think that having some of this context is valuable for

us. So how does just having this

information, some of this history, how do you think it

impacts our faith now and to start our current spiritual

formation? So one way to answer that is, is

to say that it's helpful for me to know that the books that I am

reading, that I call the Bible, that I am told it's the word of

God. That this is something that it's

not just for me that Christians for 2000 years have also agreed

with this. And they have said these are the

texts that are important. They are the things that put us

most directly in touch with Jesus, most directly in touch

with what God did in sending Jesus to the world.

And so I want to be able to learn and grow in my faith and

knowing more about God and what God is doing in the world.

These are the texts that I need to read.

And it didn't just drop from the sky 50 years ago.

Like this is a long history here, right?

And so that for part of it, or that's for part for me, that's

part of it is to say that there's a long history here and

that much smarter Christians than I made decisions a long

time ago. And I can just trust that they

made the right decisions. I also find it helpful to think

that we have so many copies of the New Testament.

There's just just so much evidence that early Christians

thought this is important. They copied and copied and

copied that. I think we can be pretty

confident that what we have in our Bible today is what Matthew

intended for us to have, or Mark intended for having what the

biblical writers were trying to say.

Yeah, I think growing up, depending on your tradition or

background, you were handed a Bible and told this is the word

of God. And we believe it.

And on one hand, like that is important and that's super true.

But it is super valuable to ask why do we, why do we trust it?

You know, let me let me just check how do we get what we

have? And so I think that's important.

And then just exactly what you said that this is Bible is not

just for me. It's so easy to come to

Scripture with my life and say God has given this to me and

it's all about me and my life. God has also written it to

thousands of believers that through the Holy Spirit we are

connected to, we are a part of, and we will see in the end, you

know, we will be reunited with Christ together.

And so it just it, it's helping me expand my imagination beyond

sitting down with my Bible and God, please fix my work problem

that I have today, you know, and it becomes part of this deep,

rich history that is for me and includes me, but was not

necessarily to me initially. And that's just, that's

incredible to think about. Yeah, no, it is.

It's it's helpful to be, we talked about not just being

upstate Christians or great church Christians.

We talked about being world Christians and understanding

what's happening around the world.

It's also important to be historical Christians and

understand where you know these thousands of years of believers,

how God has cared for, protected His Word, passed down His word.

Yeah, it's we're standing in a long line of of faith and that

is that is an important heritage.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, 10, thank you so much for

just being with us today and and walking us through all that.

And you're just, you're teaching as a gift to our church and, and

we're grateful for your time for sure.

Any parting words, Tim? You should join RTS.

My parting words. There you go, the best promo you

can ever get. Thank you all for listening.

If you have any questions or you want to learn more in this kind

of category of church history, definitely let us know.

And we can, I'm sure, dig up some more voices and some more

perspectives. I'm sure we could have Tim back.

So please give us your feedback and we'll see you guys next time

on the Grace Church Podcast.