← Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis
Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis
How Did We Get the Bible? The Canon of Scripture Explained (And What That Disputed Passage Really Means)
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- [00:00]
A
Maybe one of the greatest one liners in all of scripture.
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B
Yeah. He who is without sin. What?
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A
Cast the first stone.
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B
Cast the first stone. However, when you get to the passage in many Bibles, there's like an asterisk of sorts, and it says, this section of scripture was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible. If this passage isn't originally in the canon of scripture, well, then how do we know about everything else in the Bible? Is everything up for grabs? How did we get the Bible in the first place? And this question regarding the canonicity of the scripture or what's included in the Bible, the collection of writings that makes up the Bible is a very, very important question. Because if you can't trust the Bible, then you can't trust what the Bible says about God, sin, man, salvation, and so forth. Hank, how we doing?
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A
Doing great, Johnny. How are you doing?
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B
Good. Well, actually, not that great. I got a band aid.
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A
Why do you have a band aid?
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B
I leaned on the engine of the power washer that took a wild left turn. Turns out it was really hot.
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A
Mentally imaging you, like working on a car. Hood popped? No, Nope, just a outboard. An engine.
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B
I don't know why that's your mental imaging of.
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A
Can I tell you, I did the most, maybe the most nerve wracking thing I've done in probably 10 years this week.
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B
What was that?
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A
Okay, so public speaking, like, makes you nervous, but not super nervous. Right? So, like, we'll come in here. I feel like we're just having a conversation. I'll speak in front of community group, no issue. I'll speak to youth group, no issue. I'll do. I'll host a webinar for work, no issue. You want to know what makes me nervous? I read a book to a classroom of 4 year olds for my son's preschool this past week. And I have not legitimately been that nervous to sit down and try and read a book with seven different voices to a room of 12 four year olds who are just looking at you
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B
and like, you're like, trying to be cool dad 100%.
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A
And right as I'm walking in, my son was like, yeah, dad, you're actually the first dad to read to our class. And I was like, I represent dads everywhere.
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B
They're terrified of you.
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A
Grumpy monkey. Highly recommend it to you.
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B
That's the book.
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A
Now my kids are just screaming at me. I'm not grumpy.
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B
Well, Hank and I have our own children's book coming out soon.
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A
More to follow, more to Follow.
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B
All right, well, we're.
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A
What are we talking about today?
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B
Long story short, we're talking about how we got the Bible. I remember about a year ago I was teaching through John 8. We come to this familiar story in John 8. People know it. The woman caught in adultery, she's dragged in front of Jesus and Jesus writes, you know, writes, gets down, writes in the sand, you know, and then dramatic pause. Yeah, this dramatic pause. You know, the Pharisees are saying, hey, the law says we should stone her. What do you say?
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A
Maybe one of the greatest one liners in all of scripture.
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B
Yeah. He who is without sin. What?
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A
Cast the first stone.
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B
Cast the first stone. However, when you get to the passage in many Bibles, we're not actually going
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A
to talk about that.
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B
Yeah, it, it, there's a bracket between chapter 7, verse 43 or 53, and chapter 8, verse 11, and there's like an asterisk of sorts and it says this section of Scripture was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible. And you're kind of like, okay, wait, what's going on here? Now the science of textual criticism, which answers the question, how do we know what was originally in the Bible? It weighs and evaluates hundreds and thousands of copies of the original New testament manuscripts. And 99.5% are in agreement. There is, though, however, about a 1% invariance between some of these early manuscripts. It doesn't affect any major doctrine, but that's what kind of is involved here as we approach this well known section of Scripture. So here's the truth, and I'm using this kind of as a springboard to talk about the topic as a whole. This text, this well known beloved story, you hear it all the time. Don't judge me. He who is without sin cast the first stone. Which is. I'm saying it in a voice, but it's true, right? It's not found in pretty much the first 500 years of Christianity. It's absent from the Codex Bazae, the Codex Synod Hyocus, of course.
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A
Nailed it.
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B
I can't say this in the Codex Vanacanus now. I can hardly say it. So don't worry if you can't say it. Just try. Don't.
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A
Okay, I'm just gonna pass on that. Anemone.
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B
Anemone. Not a single church. Father Augustine, Chrysostom, or Clement of Alexandria comments on this passage and just passes directly from chapter 752 to chapter 8, verse 12, which actually makes more sense with the story of John. No Eastern Father cites this passage before the 10th century. And in fact, if you're looking for any sort of commentary on this passage, you won't find one until the 12th century. And when it does appear, it appears with a notation that this section of Scripture is not found in the earliest manuscripts. So maybe you're getting uneasy, and maybe you're beginning to ask the question, how did this passage get there in the first place?
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A
Yeah, well, and it's starting to bring into question, like, what do we do with all the surrounding verses and actually the rest of the Bible.
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B
Yeah. So somewhere along the line, this story found its way traditionally into the Scripture. It's sometimes included here, sometimes it is included in other sections of John's Gospel, and sometimes it's included after Luke 21. But frankly, in the academy of scholastic thought, the most reliable and respected scholars on the New Testament do not believe that this section is part of John's Gospel. DA Carson, for instance, says, and he's probably the most premier scholar on John's Gospel, notes that while this section is present in many of the medieval translations of the Bible, and it is absent from nearly every single early manuscript we have, Carson continues, despite the best efforts to prove that this narrative was originally part of John's Gospel, the evidence is against it. Leon Morris, who is also a very respected New Testament Greek scholar, says the textual evidence makes it impossible to hold that this section is an authentic part of the gospel. So why is this section in your Bible at all? Well, first of all, the story is very old. It may have actually happened. Carson says it's probably a true story, and the passage does seem to bear true to the heart of Christ, meaning that there's nothing in this passage that seems like a total differentiated feature of the heart of God. And so people thought, hey, it's fair to include. But therefore, as a result, we're left with this asterisk section. Asterisks, asterisk, text. You're right, I'm wrong. Section of the Bible.
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A
Great, let's keep rolling.
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B
Okay. But maybe I'm just still trying to figure out how to say asterisks, but maybe there's this percolating question in your mind, and it's definitely a question. Percolating being a good word there. Definitely a question you should know the answer to. If this passage isn't originally in the canon of Scripture, well, then how do we know about everything else in the Bible? Is everything up for grabs? How did we get the Bible in the first place? I mean, after all, you have to just use your brain for a Second here, God didn't drop down the Bible in this calfskin, leather bound, gold ribbon, gilded pages, you know, closed book. No. So how did we get the Bible? And this question regarding the canonicity of the Scripture or what's included in the Bible, the collection of writings that makes up the Bible is a very, very important question. In fact, I would say it's one of the most important questions you could ever ask is how and why can I trust the Bible? You may rebuttal and say, well, actually the most important question is what must I do to be saved. But I would say, well, the answer to that latter question is based upon the truth that is found in the former one, that being how I can trust the Bible. Because if you can't trust the Bible, then you can't trust what the Bible says about God, sin, man, salvation and so forth.
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A
Well, in that point, I just want to jump in and make sure we don't blow by that.
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B
Right, because the last time I kind of turned to you, you just had nothing.
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A
I was dumbstruck. No, practically. I think sometimes if you grow up, there's probably, there's a variety of audiences listening to this. For my context, I grew up in a church where they had scripture in super high regard. And there was, it became almost like a unassumed or byword. It was in the DNA and kind of in the water in which I swam growing up. And so that point is so important. I want to double down on that reality of we're not saying Scripture's important for some kind of secret, you know, reasoning of like, oh, scripture's important just because it's important. It's important insofar as it's revealing the word of God for matters of salvation. And if we take out scripture, we lose the chain link where we actually understand how to be saved.
- [08:32]
B
Or you're just saying if it can't be trusted, it's credible. If we don't know it's God's word, then how can you know the truth about God's son? Hey folks, one of the things that I've said often, and Harry often says this to me is accountability is the friend of integrity. We live in a pornographic world and it's really important. It's critical that we have different systems of accountability set up in our own life so that we would be able to honor the Lord with what we look at with our eyes. Personally Speaking, I use Accountable2You as a software and have different partners that keep me accountable. They can see what I'm looking At if anything raises a flag, and I want that because I do want to honor the Lord with whatever I consume on my devices. I would encourage you, if you don't have some sort of an accountability, to check out Accountable to you. You. If you use our code dial in. That'll waive 25% off your first year of your subscription. You can check out more information about accountable2you on their website accountabletoyou.com dial in. Romans 13:14 is really clear. Make no provision for the flesh. And as a man that wants to honor the Lord, and you may be a man or a woman or an old man or an old woman that wants to honor the Lord, I would encourage you to get this accountability in your life so that you would be able to honor the Lord with what you look at on your devices. Most children, I would say most adults for that matter today, are altogether ill equipped to handle the assaults that are lobbed at the word of God. And the assaults are numerous. For example, the leading textual critic today of the New Testament, meaning that the guy that throws the most academic and scholastic haymakers at the Bible, he is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and then Wheaton College, two Christian institutions. His name is Bart Ehrman, and now he makes his living as a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, talking all about the errors of the Bible. So today, if you showed up in his classroom or thousands upon thousands like his on a college campus nationwide, the professor would ask you, hey, does anybody here believe the Bible to be true? And let's just say it's Hayes. He's all grown up, and he raises his hand and he says, I believe it to be true. And the professor goes, okay, come on, here we go. He's licking his chest and he goes, so why do you believe it to be true? Hayes says, well, I grew up in a Christian home. My parents taught me taught it to be true. And then the guy goes, well, are your parents ever wrong? Did your parents give you a lunchable telling you it was healthy?
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A
Did they give you. No, we didn't do that.
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B
That was a treat. Did they give you gushers saying it was a substitute for fruit? Did you eat. Did you drink Sunny D after a soccer game thinking it was a substitute for orange juice? Were your parents ever wrong? Did they tell you you can't swim for an hour after you eat food and so forth?
- [10:53]
A
Well, you're just starting to get a little close to home. I know. Yeah.
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B
Yeah, Rice bowl.
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A
I literally grew up drinking orange soda thinking it was orange juice. Yeah, well, that wasn't until recently that that fell apart to that's next episode.
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B
But he was just, he would begin to attack that type of an idea, that this is what I've grown up in. He would say, well, hey, well, for instance, here's Aliyah. She grew up studying the, the Vedas of Hinduism. And so are you saying her parents, she believes them because her parents taught them. And here's a young man and he believes in the Quran because that's what he learned from his parents. So they, they just begin to kind of deteriorate at this, the trust you have in the validity of Scripture. So what's so important to what's so special about the Bible? And just again here, before we move on, every answer to every important question regarding our faith hinges on the confidence that you have that the Bible is the word of God. So I wanted to ask some big questions. And my hope is far from undermining or undercutting your confidence in scripture and whoever's listening or watching that it would bolster it and buttress that you can know for sure this is the word of God. So first question, big idea is how did we get the canon of Scripture? And again, that word canon refers to a standard, a measure, a rule, a list, a collection of the writings of Scripture. So how do we get the canon of scripture? Well, we can start with the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written roughly between 1400 BC and 430 BC, and God gave guidelines to determine whether the words were from a legitimate prophet or from a false prophet. We could elaborate on this and we could talk about this for a long time, but we could summarize the Old Testament by saying, we know that the Old Testament is the word of God because Jesus treated it as the word of God. He says in John 10 that the Scriptures cannot be broken. He says in Luke that heaven and earth will pass away, but none of my words will pass away. And if Jesus rose from the grave and validated that he was in fact God, and he says the Old Testament is indeed the word of God, then we can take his word for it. The Old Testament we have today is the same Old Testament that Jesus had. And if you go to a Jewish synagogue today, the books in their Old Testament or the content of their Old Testament is exactly the same as ours, except that they have a little bit of differentiated grouping. Like we have a very structured, where we have the law, the wisdom literature, the prophets, they have different groupings, but the same exact content and substance.
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A
Yeah, that's helpful. So then Maybe what do we do with Old Testament is solid. I feel like we're getting to New Testament. If I was to throw in another question. I mean I remember I had a professor in college who was saying like, well, why don't you read the Apocrypha maybe one, what is the Apocrypha? And two, why is that not included in the Bible you'd be reading before you?
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B
Well, the Apocrypha was not viewed to be sacred scripture by even those who wrote the apocrypha. It would be a misconception to say that the Protestants removed seven books out of the Catholic Bible or whatnot. We did not remove these books from God's Word because they were never intended to be in God's word. And that's why I even mentioned, hey, you go to a Jewish synagogue today, same content, same substance that we have. The Apocrypha itself once again does not even claim to be Scripture. Josephus, who is the most well known Jewish historian of the first century says they have not been esteemed. That's the writings of the Apocrypha of like authority with the former the Old Testament by our forefathers. It's not necessarily heretical, it's just not considered inspired. Some of the reformers talk about how it is a helpful source of intertestamental history, but it's not to be viewed in the same way as the rest of sacred Scripture. So Old Testament apocrypha. Now let's talk about the New Testament. A book in the New Testament was considered inspired if it was written directly by an apostle or on behalf of an apostle with apostolic approval. Apostolic credibility is absolutely essential. Sometimes we get this idea that, you know, because there was no Bible and I'll talk about this more for the first few hundred years of the Christian faith that it was like kind of this willy nilly loosey goosey enterprise and they were just throwing books in. But no, it was the apostles that Jesus told in John 14:26 that the Holy Spirit is going to come and he's going to bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. He's going to give him the gift of remembering all that Jesus had said and done. That's the Gospels. Then he says in John 16:13 that he's going to guide you, that the Holy Spirit is going to guide the apostles into all the truth and he's going to disclose from what is mine and reveal it to you and he's gonna show you what is to come. He's going to remind them that's the gospels, he's gonna guide them. That's the epistles, and then he's gonna show them that's the prophetic books of Revelation. So this reality that the apostles are the ones that wrote the scripture, gave the scripture, was not just kind of like some claim that they kind of held close to the vest. It was validated by the supernatural signs and wonders that they manifested that they were those who were really with Jesus and spoke on of Jesus. This is why the canon is closed. This is why nothing can be added to the Bible, because there is no such thing as a modern day apostle in the same way as those initial apostles and disciples that spoke on behalf of God and were revealing his revelation to the world.
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A
And maybe just. I don't want to go send us off a long tangent, but you've mentioned apostles multiple times. If you're listening to this and you're hearing, I think for a long time I read apostles and disciples and followers of Jesus almost interchangeably. What. How would you define apostle for us as. That's clearly an important part of who wrote the New Testament.
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B
Yeah, well, even apostle, you can have like a. And that's why I said like apostles in the early church type of sense, because the same word for apostle can sometimes just be referred to as a, or can mean a sent one. Like a missionary disciple could be one of the 12 disciples. Or it could say in John 6, many of his disciples left him like those who were learning from him. So there is some sort of a, a nuance. Are you talking about One of the 12 disciples or are you talking about Matthew 28 says, Go therefore make disciples of all the nations. Like every Christian is a disciple. They're a learner, they're a student of the word of God. I'm referring here to those, those founding apostles that God gave the power of the Holy Spirit to speak, heal, reveal scripture, write scripture, Paul, Peter, John, type of apostle. Now in the early church, there was this recognition though, that these apostles had been with Jesus and they spoke authoritatively on behalf of the one who had been risen from the dead. Now this idea of the resurrection is also really important here. When Paul is writing the book of Corinthians, at least half of the 500 witnesses to the resurrection are still alive, he says, most of which are still alive. And again, these people are risking their life, they're being slaughtered. And the resurrection changed everything. Meaning to a skeptic, if you're listening and you're like, hey, I'm not so sure if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. All of these claims in the Bible, the number one selling book in history by a landslide, would have been very easily falsifiable. But there were hundreds of people ready to die for Jesus saying that he was alive. Now, Michael Krueger, Robert Plummer, some other great scholars provide numerous misconceptions regarding how we got the Bible. And I'll link some of the books that I've read on the subject of canonicity in the show notes because they've been really helpful for me. But these misconceptions, I think, get to the heart of the matter of maybe what I think people have the most uncertainty about, the first of which is that the authors of the New Testament, this is a misconception, didn't believe that what they were writing is the scripture. Like, didn't know they would be as
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A
surprised as we were.
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B
Yeah, and I gave this story when I was preaching that, you know, if you picture some guy, it's the 50th anniversary of the restaurant chain that he started with his wife, you know, started as one location, and now it's 373 locations, you know, nationwide. And he gets to the 50th anniversary and he says, you know, when Mary and I started Bob's Diner in 1976, we would have never anticipated all that the Lord had done through this, what started as one restaurant. And we like that humility and we like that self deprecation. And oh man, he had no idea. He just took one step at a time. And we kind of get that idea that like, oh, the apostles, if they showed up today, they would be absolutely floored, you know, shocked out of their mind.
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A
I was just writing Romans in my. In prison.
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B
Yeah. Like, who would have thought all that God had done, you know, would do through. Through these words? But no, no, not at all. That's not what happened. And even sometimes there's this idea that someone read what Paul wrote in Ephesians, wife, submit to your husbands, and was like, I like this. Let's make this the inspired word of God. No, when Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, when he wrote Romans, he knew he was writing the very words of God, inspired by the spirit of God. Sometimes today you get this question, especially as it. If you're pushing back on something. I find this question most common in that type of an environment. Who wrote that, Paul or Jesus? As if Jesus words bear more authority than what Paul wrote in the book of Romans or what Peter wrote in his epistles. But when Paul wrote these Letters in the Word of God, they bear, according to Jesus, in John 16, the same authority as if Jesus himself was speaking them. For example, Paul says in 1st Thessalonians 2, 13. For this reason, I mean, this is big. We also constantly thank God that when you receive the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, for what it really is the word of God which also performs its work in you who believe. So he's saying, hey, when you heard my teaching, you did not receive it as the word of men. You received it for what it is he says, the word of God. So according to Jesus, the Spirit's words to the apostles are not junior varsity revelation, but the very revelation of Jesus himself. And in my Bible, you'll see it. It's a red letter Bible. And those can sometimes be helpful. We see exactly what was written or said by Jesus, but it can give us this false idea that what is in red is more inspired, more inerrant, more authoritative, and more sufficient than what's in black. But not according to Jesus, because the rest of the New Testament and when they were writing this, they knew this bears the same authority as the Gospels and what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. Why? Well, because everything written in the New Testament shares the same source. Who's that?
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A
The Holy Spirit.
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B
The Holy Spirit. So Jesus told those in the Gospels that if you dismiss my teaching, you're not just dismissing my teaching, you, you are dismissing the words of him who sent me because I speak on behalf of the Father. So he's saying, if you dismiss my words, you're dismissing the Father's words. And Jesus says in John 16, in that same way that I speak what I hear from the Father, the Spirit is going to come and he's going to speak what he hears from me. Which gives Paul the right to say in 1 Corinthians 14, when you dismiss this, he says, you are not dismissing man's word, you are dismissing whose word? God's. So this idea, or this reality, I should say, corrects the idea that these letters in the New Testament were extended authority by the Church after they were voted on, and then they were made kind of the divine word of God. No, Paul wants you to know, Peter wants you to know that this isn't friendly advice. This is divine instruction. Paul even quotes from the Gospel of Luke, Luke, the physician, not a disciple. He quotes from the Gospel of Luke and calls it divine Scripture. In the same breath as the Old Testament law. Peter refers to Paul's writing as sacred scripture. And when Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable. He's not just referring to the Old Testament, he's referring to what he is currently writing. And so I think that's a big misconception that, oh, these guys would be surprised to find out that what they wrote is scripture. But Paul, who wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament, when he writes the book of Colossians, the letter to the Colossians, he says, hey, after you're done reading this letter, take it to the church at Laodicea. Because Paul knew he was writing to more than one church at one time in one location, but writing the timeless truth of God's word.
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A
Well, and it's just so important, we can't overemphasize it enough to underscore your point is God sends Jesus. Jesus in full submission to the Father, speaks the words of God clearly. Then Jesus gives apostolic authority to his disciples and to Paul and the apostles at that time, writing on behalf of the apostles. Then those same apostles are claiming that same authority when they're writing this text. And so you can't separate one from the other. You can't separate God from Jesus, Jesus from God, Jesus from his disciples or disciples from Jesus through the working of the Holy Spirit.
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B
Yeah. Because Peter says in 2 Peter 1, no matter if Scripture is one's own interpretation or one's own idea, but men carried along by the Holy Spirit and it says spoke from God.
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A
Maybe to keep building on another misconception that might come to mind is, I mean, in studying Corinthians, for example, we have 1 and 2 Corinthians, but Paul wrote a bunch of letters to the Corinthians. So why aren't those included? And was there wide disagreement on which letters were the apostles writing that were thus saith the Lord, the word of God, and what letters were merely kind of interpersonal correspondence.
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B
Yeah. I think sometimes we get this idea that the early church didn't really know what should be included in the scripture. And then some powerful men came into a room during the reign of Constantine and voted lots of robes. Yeah.
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A
Incense, Maybe myrrh.
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B
Myrrh, okay. And they determine what should be included in the Bible in the midst of this literary tug of war. But that's not the case at all. It wasn't hundreds of years of indecision and chaos. And obviously, you know, Michael Krueger talks about this like, oh, what about the Gospel of Peter? Well, the Gospel of Peter, it's the disciples get to the tomb and Jesus comes out of the tomb and he's like 60ft tall. And then the cross comes floating out behind him and begins to speak. And so the people that would have been a part of the church of Jerusalem were like, hey, no, Peter was our pastor. He never said that. So it's dismissed. So with that, it wasn't hundreds of years of indecision and chaos. And then some guys did debates, cast votes, and now we have the Bible by the middle of the 2nd century AD which is just 50 years or so after the apostle John. We have at least 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament that are universally recognized as divine now. Well, 22 of the 27. What about the other five? Well, the other five being second and third John. Second Peter, Jude and James were just not as circulated and not in third John is definitely the word of God. But I can ask you, like, hey, when's the last time you've ever heard a sermon on third John? They were just not as circulated. So Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John. So Irenaeus, Polycarp, John, we have a list from him going back to the second century in which he fully affirms the core canon of scripture. Hundreds of years before there is ever any sort of counsel. I mentioned the story and you know, when I was preaching about it. But sometimes, especially as it relates, relates to sports, you have these guys that are like depreciated because they played in previous generations 100%, you know, and so people like to trash Larry Bird, you know, and just say he wasn't that good, you know, undisputably, he's a top 10 player of all time. And if you don't know who Larry. If you don't know who Larry Bird is, Google him now.
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A
But people putting LeBron ahead of Jordan.
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B
Yeah, and they depreciate because it's like in a previous generation and kind of like we want to raise up our own generation. So what they do is they kind of talk poorly about the preceding one.
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A
Discount.
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B
Yeah, like, Larry Bird wasn't that good. And I kind of do. I really do find it interesting that these guys that followed these men in the early church, they never depreciated what was being written by the apostles. It's not like Irenaeus and Ignatius and Athanasius were saying, hey, who did John think he was thinking that what he was writing was the inspired word of God, or Paul really had a really high and mighty view of himself and this guy, you know, good guy, used by God, but like he's delusional. No, these guys in the years that followed said, no, we have the scripture. What they were writing was the word of God. And so we know that from the earliest centuries, decades and hundreds of years before there's any sort of official church council. Which kind of brings us to the third misconception that the church determined which books were in the Bible.
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A
Before we jump to there, this, when you taught on this, this was actually one of the most convicting or potent points to me is because that truly through every single generation, like there's always kind of old guy yelling at the sky, like get off my lawn. Back in my day, I walked up to school both ways. Like that's endemic to the human for sure nature. And so the fact that within 100 years of these books being written, they're being set aside as discreetly understood, like no, no, no. Those are. Other than what we have today is just such, such an important point. And it flies in the face of especially like culture today that we're constantly thinking like we are enlightened in a way that no generation prior to us has been enlightened.
- [27:31]
B
No, it's. And I think it's, you know, really important to know that within 50 years of John's the apostles death, you have the entire doctrinal direction of the New Testament. And Michael Krueger put it this way, and I really loved it. He said, if you went to someone in the early church and said, how did you choose which gospels to include? They would look at you confused and scratch their heads and say, what do you mean by choose? We didn't choose these books. We recognize that these books bear apostolic authority and were given to us by those who were with us, Jesus. So regarding this determined, like how, how did the books get chosen to be in the Bible? It wasn't, you know, and I think this misconception is there because of books like the Da Vinci Code. And people watch the movie and say like, okay, how could we really know? But honestly, you know, even thinking about the environment that you grew up in, going like, well, I don't even really want to ask the question. I think the Bible like was, came together around 400 years after Jesus. But I don't even want to ask the question now. In the early church, in order for letters or books to go from one location to another, that it had to be hand copied, they were risking their lives to do so. They were being annihilated there also at this point in time was there's no councils, no conferences, no zoom. Do you do zoom or you do so much zoom?
- [28:41]
A
Oh, I do. I'm. I'm ambidextrous.
- [28:44]
B
All things.
- [28:44]
A
All people throwing at teams every now and then, like a crazy guy.
- [28:48]
B
Charlie chipper Jones. No YouTube. And yet, in spite of all of this persecution, antagonism, there is a remarkable unity and consensus in regards to what was considered as divine scripture. And going along with our previous point, Irenaeus, in a time where the Greeks in the following century were claiming to have special revelation from God, he responded and said, no, we have what was written by the apostles and was inspired by the Holy Spirit and what is contained within the word of God. Decades before the councils of Hippo and Carthage and before Constantine becomes emperor, we have this letter from Athanasius, and He lists the 27 books of the New Testament. That's before anybody affirmed or voted on those things. So I just say this because it's not like some men once again gathered in this dark room and you take the wealthy elite religious, you know, and then they voted on it. That's just not the case at all. Now what's this idea about Constantine then? You know? Well, when he did become emperor, he provided a freedom that the early church had never experienced.
- [29:45]
A
This is for the first time, for
- [29:47]
B
the first time, they kind of came out of their. Their house, churches in hiding. I mean, for the first couple hundred years, they're being lit on fire, you know, and fed to wild beast. And when they gathered, they didn't form the Bible. They discussed what had been recognized to be the written and inspired word of God. And they said, hey, here are the writings that we have. And it was actually at that point they were able to recognize the truth that they had received from the apostles. I like what J. Packer says. He says, the church no more gave us the canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. So if you were to ask the question, when did Paul's letter to the Romans become the inspired word of God? The answer would be before the ink dried on the parchment, it didn't become God's word. It was always God's word. And when Paul was writing the letter to the Romans, he knew it was the word of God. Now, after all these books were included in the canon of scripture, let's go back to this. Like, okay, there's this period of recognition, okay, this is the Bible. Over the following millennium, there is still no printing press. You know, until Gutenberg, there's no photocopier at this point. So these books, the New Testament itself, was copied one at a time for hundreds upon hundreds of years. So if you were to ask the question, well, if this is the inspired word of God, why is there so much variance among the manuscripts? And here's a few reasons. First of all, while the original writing of Scriptures is inerrant, the autograph or the copy, everyone who copied that inerrant word is not inerrant. You know, they're fallible men. Secondly, God uses historic normal channels to dispense his revelation meaning. I found it interesting, and I mentioned this on Sunday, that the most well known man in human history never penned a single word. You know, the only other thing you would say is, well, he wrote in the sand. And we go, well, we actually don't even know if it was in the Bible. So he uses men. He uses imperfect men. Third, scholars recognize that when it comes to scripture there is an honest transmission of variance like this is in certain manuscripts. It's a little bit different here on the minutia, but when you do the research and you add up all of this differentiation, you become more assured than ever that this is the actual word of God. That is sure, accurate, clear and authoritative. So that's just kind of like, okay, that's there. So if that's the case, then there is a little bit of variance. And I know we're trying to put in a lot of content here.
- [32:12]
A
Yeah, don't worry, this is only going to be a 90 minute episode.
- [32:14]
B
Yeah. How can you. And why can you trust the Bible? I would say first of all, because of the textual reliability and manuscript evidence. The Christian Research and Apologetic center provides the following data. There are 10 existing manuscripts of Julius Caesar's Gallic wars and all of those manuscripts are older than the 10th century AD. There are seven copies of Plato's writings and the earliest one we have is 900 AD which means that the span between the events recorded and the earliest manuscript is 1200 years. That's a lot of time. There are 49 manuscripts from the writings of Aristotle and the earliest ones we have are from 1100 AD, 1400 years after the life of Aristotle. There are 574 copies of Homer's Iliad, but the span between the originals and the copies are over 500 years. Now that's 10 copies, 7 copies, 49 copies and 574 copies. But when it comes to the New Testament, we have over 5,600 manuscripts, many written within 100 years of the events they describe. P52, which is a manuscript. The one we have of John is dated within 30 years of the death of John himself. However, when you add the Syriac, Latin, Coptic and Aramaic languages, we have over 25,000 manuscripts. It's important to note that no other work in antiquity comes even close to the Bible. If you were to doubt the historicity of the Bible, you would have to let all of history and antiquity slip into total oblivion. Today we have over 2 million pages of handwritten pages over the course of 1600 years. And the reliability, the unity and the accuracy of these documents is truly amazing. It's a supernatural book that has been supernaturally preserved. And providentially in the time where there is the greatest amount of attacks against the Bible, we have the greatest amount of evidence that this is in fact the Word of God.
- [34:08]
A
That's shocking. I mean there's just a level to which it's like that. It feels like when there's that degree of variance, it feels like in and of itself evidence or demonstration of the miraculous.
- [34:20]
B
Yeah. You know, another reason why you could trust the Bible is the unity and consistency. It's been said before, but The Bible is 66 books written by 40 authors in three languages and in three continents. But it all points to the person of Jesus Christ. It's a cohesive story. Sometimes I say it often when I'm preaching and you've heard me say this so much, don't miss the forest with the trees. It's not just chapter verse, it's a grand story.
- [34:43]
A
And that goes to your earlier point about the Gospel of Peter. We don't have, in the case of these 66 books, we have unbelievable unity. Meaning we don't have New Testament books that are totally contradicting Old Testament writings.
- [34:57]
B
Yeah, and there is, people would say, well, what about all the contradictions in the Bible?
- [35:02]
A
What about all the contradictions?
- [35:03]
B
Well, there are no contradictions in the Scripture. There is tension. Like for instance, God's sovereignty and human responsibility. We've been talking about that. Those are two realities that you see in Scripture. But it's not a contradiction. We see that as we come to God's Word. This is a book of harmony. Another just reason you can trust the Bible is it is self authenticating, meaning that as you come to God's Word and you read God's Word, you come to realize that God's Word is reading you and it's the one, it's God's living revelation that transforms your life. So question just. And I want to kind of begin to lay on the Plane here. And this is really. I think the heart behind it is, what's the big deal? You know? And maybe you've gone like, this is all unnecessary. I totally trust the Bible.
- [35:47]
A
Yeah, what's the point?
- [35:48]
B
Yeah. Well, I would want you to be encouraged that you can trust this book. You know, when David says, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all day long. When Peter says in 1 Peter 2, like newborn babies crave, long for the pure spiritual milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect of salvation. This book alone is the word of God, inspired by God and is invested with the power and authority of God, which is why when I preach, I don't veer from the Scripture. Because when I veer from the Scripture, I lose all of the ability to say, thus, says the Lord. The Old Testament refers to itself as the very words of God more than 3,000 times. The new Testament writers affirm this, quoting from the old testament over 300 times and referring to it as divine scripture. The opening words of Revelation read, the revelation of Jesus Christ, not the revelation of John, the revelation of Jesus Christ, Revelation 19:9. These are true words of God. Revelation 21:5. These words are faithful and true. So you ought to be thrilled by this, right? And sometimes I think we become like, hey, take your Bible, open it up with me. And it's just like, all right, this is the book. This is the book that we have been. This is the way it's been handed down to us from our fathers. No, no. The Bible says that the word of God is living and active and it's been supernaturally inspired and supernaturally preserved. And as a Christian in the modern era, you know, today's day, I'm not asking the Holy Spirit for the work of inspiration. We're not revealing new Scripture. Revelation says, whoever tries to add to these words the curses in this book will be added to them. So what am I asking the Holy Spirit for? Not his work of inspiration, but his work of illumination. We're asking God, as we turn to His Word, that he would turn the light on so that we would be able to understand it. This is why David prays. Psalm 119:18, open up my eyes that I may behold the wonderful things in your word. We ask God's spirit to help us to understand. First, John 2 says, we have an anointing from the Holy One so that we would be able to. Yes, there's complications or difficulties or complexities as we approach the Scripture. There's tensions, but the Holy Spirit helps us to understand God's Word. And as we behold who Jesus is in God's word, the Holy Spirit's work is to transform us into the image of the one that we behold. That's 2 Corinthians 3, 18. So he takes the truth of Jesus, draws us near to Jesus, and glorifies Jesus by transforming us into the image of Jesus.
- [38:08]
A
It's incredibly helpful. And I think if I'm listening to this, I'm thinking a couple things. One, if I'm someone who's a skeptic, I think it's a helpful jumping off point to say, look at the historicity or the context or the data, purely empirically, that would seem to point to there's something greater going on here. The other side of the equation, which I feel like you kind of almost buried the lead to me. Our final point was actually, to me, the most telling point is come taste and see for yourself. Like, pick up the Bible. There's so many, so many things of. It's like, it's right here for you. Go read the book. You talk to people who've. I had a professor in college, one of my favorite professors who came to know the Lord reading the book of Romans and just said, I was struck on my dorm room floor as I got to Romans 8, that it was speaking to me about Chris, his name. And so it would just be an encouragement to folks of like, don't take our word for it. If anything, let this be a jumping off point to go study, pick it up for yourself and actually read the words of God preserve for you for thousands of years. Not like for you as in like random person, but like, no, literally for you hearing these words. Go read it.
- [39:18]
B
No, and it is personal. Like, even I didn't include it when I was preaching through it in the later services. But in Hebrews it says that the scripture says to you. And he quotes Proverbs, but he says to the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews that this is something that the Spirit says to you, meaning that God's word speaks to us today in an active way. And that's how the Spirit of God works in our life. And even when we talk about that language of I want to be filled with the spirit. What does it mean to be filled with the spirit? Well, Ephesians 5:18 says, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit. Okay, and then it says, speaking to one another in what psalms? Meaning that if you want to be a spirit filled believer, you have to be a word saturated believer, because the spirit of God takes the word of God that he is supernaturally inspired and supernaturally preserved. And he uses that as a means to transform you, the central means to transform you into the image of Jesus. And so I would just. Last thing. You know, it's one thing to be a Bible believing Christian. We used to say that man is a Bible believing Christian. It's another thing to be a Bible loving Christian and to grow in your love for this book, which is one of my central prayers. You have to be convinced this is the word of God. This is not the product of men. If it was the product of men, you would be, you know, totally justified in doubting it, to being hesitant of submitting your life to it. That's one of the strategies of the devil. If this is the product of some men gathered in a room 400 years after Jesus, then the content within it can be dismissed. But if this is the inspired word of God, which it is, this is the ultimate authority in our life. It tells us everything about how we live personally, how we're structured ecclesiologically in the church, or how our family's structured. Because this is not man's word, it's God's word.
- [41:03]
A
Well, and you mentioned this in teaching, we touched on it briefly, I think, in this episode. But 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, the words of this book contain everything you could need so that you're equipped for every good work of righteousness. I mean, that is a profound encouragement and I appreciate you taking the time to even freshly challenge us.
- [41:23]
B
Yeah, thanks, Hank.
- [41:24]
A
Thanks, Johnny.