Christ leaves His word behind and preserves it: Canonicity Part 2. John 14:7; 1 Co 2:16
length: 1:02:37 - taught on Sep, 8 2011
Class Outline:
John 14:7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
/The Son departs but He leaves doctrine in its permanent form. The departure of Jesus Christ to be at the right hand of the Father does not remove the possibility of occupation with Christ. Once Christ ascends the plan of God is seen through His Word. \
And how did God choose to preserve His word? How is it that we can confidently know God’s word thousands of years after it was written? How can we know that we have the accuracy of God’s word preserved when we don’t have the original manuscripts?
This is important for every believer to know so that he may have confidence in the written canon of Scripture.
And so we pause here to study:
The Doctrine of Canonicity.
Definiton:
Canonicity is derived from the Greek word “kanon” which originally meant a rod or a ruler - hence a measuring stick or a norm.
/God the Holy Spirit so directed the writers of Scripture that without changing their personality, their vocabulary, their frame of reference, God’s complete message to mankind was recorded in their own language and vernacular.\
/The Origin of the Scriptures:
The Bible was inspired by God and it is now complete.\
2 Tim 3:16 again says: All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book : if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book;\
1CO 2:16, it is the mind of Christ.
Yet, not only do we understand that the Scriptures, as they were written in time were written through the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, it is also revealed through the Spirit that these words have existed in eternity past.
Prov 8:22 "The LORD possessed me [wisdom] at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old.
Prov 8:23 "From everlasting I was established,
From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.
Prov 8:24 "When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no springs abounding with water.
Prov 8:25 "Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills I was brought forth;
Prov 8:26 While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,
Nor the first dust of the world.
Prov 8:27 "When He established the heavens, I was there,
When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep,
Prov 8:28 When He made firm the skies above,
When the springs of the deep became fixed,
Prov 8:29 When He set for the sea its boundary,
So that the water should not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth;
Prov 8:30 Then I was beside Him, as a master workman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Prov 8:31 Rejoicing in the world, His earth,
And having my delight in the sons of men.
The Bible also reveals to us the unknown past of the history of the universe, both earthly history, Genesis, and angelic history (Eze 28, Isa 14).
And every time archeology digs up something from the past that is related to biblical truth it always proves the perfect accuracy of the Bible.
Even the laws given in the Bible concerning establishment in marriage, family, government, and personal decisions even concerning hygiene are always found to benefit mankind.
These laws perfectly express God’s essence and will for His people, for their good and NOT their demise. These have applied to every generation in human history.
Finally, under proof of the origin of the Scriptures, the subject of prophecy in the Bible is staggering.
Two thirds of the Bible is dedicated to prophecy. Many of these prophecies have been fulfilled precisely as they were given and therefore we fully know that all prophecy will be fulfilled.
Only God could know the program of human history so accurately and precisely.
The full realm of fulfilled prophecy in the word of God would be too extensive for this study. I suggest you pick up Pastor’s series on it. But to suffice, we will show one prophecy that is as astounding as any other.
DAN 9:24 "Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place.
DAN 9:25 "So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;
In context, Daniel’s weeks refers to 7 years and not days, DAN 9:1-2.
In verse 25 the seven and sixty-two weeks leading up until “Messiah the Prince” begins at the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.
The Scriptures contain several decrees given to restore the Jews from Babylonian captivity and to rebuild the temple, 2CH 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-3, 6:3-8, 7:7.
But /when we turn to the decree of Artaxerxes, made in his twentieth year, NEH 2:1-8, for the first time is permission granted to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. This prophecy fulfills the conditions of DAN 9:25\
The Persian edict which restored the autonomy of Judah was issued in the Jewish month of Nisan. It was in fact dated from the 1st of Nisan. … The seventy weeks are therefore to be computed from the 1st of Nisan B.C. 445. (Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince).
This date corresponds to the 14th of March in the Julian calendar.
A year in prophetic scriptures is 360 days (DAN 7:25; REV 12:6; REV 13:4-7).
/Therefore, 69 weeks of prophetic years of 360 days (69 x 7 x 360 = 173,880 days) = 173,880 days.\
/After this many days, from March 14th B.C. 445, one would arrive at the 6th of April, A.D. 32.\
To correlate the two calendars one must take into account the leap years of the Julian calendar (116 days)
This date (April 6) corresponds to the 10th of Nisan in A.D. 32, which is four days before the Passover, the very day of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Of that day, even the Lord said…
/Luke 19:42
"If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace-but now it is hidden from your eyes. (NIV)\
The Bible surely has its origin from God and is not inspired by men.
/The Old Testament:
The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, although only a handful of chapters were written in Aramaic.\
Therefore the scope of our study concerns the Hebrew in the OT and koine or “common” Greek in the NT.
Greek and Hebrew are very different languages. They not only look different, but they differ dramatically in their form and function. Because English is related through other languages to Greek, most people can make out some of the Greek letters and can understand certain Greek terms. (White, KJO Controversy)
/For instance the original Greek of John 1:1 is as follows:
Now look at an OT verse in the Hebrew:
/א בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.\
That’s GEN 1:1 by the way.
The two languages also differ in their complexity and flexibility. Hebrew is an ancient tongue, and as such is rather “concrete” in tone. What it says, it says, and it does not contain nearly the same ability to express subtle nuances and shades of meaning as either English or Greek.
/Greek on the other hand, far exceeds English in its ability to convey intricate meanings and delicate turns of thought. Greek is a more technical language, a more precise language than either Hebrew or English. (White, KJO Controversy). \
A great help to us was the creation of the Septuagint.
After the Babylonian captivity the Jews were scattered over the Persian empire. At the fall of this great empire Alexander the great extended his conquests throughout the known world and he was pro-Semitic.
At that time, 280 B.C. the largest group of Jews in the world settled at Alexandria, Egypt. The Jews there adopted the Greek culture and the Hellenistic Greek language.
They no longer read their scriptures in the original Hebrew so they set out to make a translation of the Holy Scriptures into Greek.
/In 280 B.C. 72 Alexandrian scholars got together and produced an amazingly accurate OT translation. This was called the Septuagint or “the Seventy” in honor of the translators.\
Copies were made and circulated among the Greek speaking Jews. It was also widely used in Palestine during the incarnation of Jesus and in the time of the Apostles.
However, the OT scriptures are never under the amount of scrutiny as the NT scriptures.
/Unlike the NT, the OT scriptures were kept among one people, the Jews, for centuries. Outside of the Septuagint it remained in Hebrew, was kept among people who spoke the same language, and the Jews were well trained copyists and preservers of the OT.\
The criterion for making a copy of the OT was intensely rigorous with high standards and was only done by well trained scribes who knew the language very well.
In content the OT in Hebrew is the same as our OT in English. However, the number of books and their arrangement is different.
/Originally the OT was divided into 3 parts: The Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.\
/The Torah or the Pentateuch consists of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.\
/The second group, the Nabhim or Prophets which are split into two categories; the Former Prophets (before the Babylonian captivity) and the Latter prophets (after the Babylonian captivity). There are four books in each category.\
Among the former prophets we have Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (Samuel and Kings was not broken down into two parts like we have now).
Joshua is the human author of the last chapter of Deuteronomy and the Book of Joshua. Samuel wrote Judges and First and Second Samuel. The human author of Kings is anyone’s guess.
The Latter prophets are commonly known as the Major and Minor Prophets, not in terms of importance but in terms of length.
/The three Major Prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.\
/The Minor Prophets, which we divide into 12 separate books, are all one in the Hebrew Bible, called the Twelve. Apart from Daniel “The Twelve” includes everything from Hosea to Malachi.\
One of the important things to understand here is that when the OT was quoted it was often the scroll that was indicated and not necessarily the author.
If Jesus said, “As Jeremiah says…” when in reality it was Zechariah, He wasn’t making a mistake. They did not have modern books in those days; but they used scrolls. If a scroll contained more than one book then it was given the name of the first book in the scroll.
/Matt 27:9
Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel; \
I quote from Dr. Lightfoot:
It was an ancient custom among the Jews, says Dr. Lightfoot, to divide the Old Testament into three parts: the first beginning with the law was called THE LAW the second beginning with the Psalms was called THE PSALMS; the third beginning with the prophet in question was called JEREMIAH: thus, then, the writings of Zechariah and the other prophets being included in that division that began with Jeremiah, all quotations from it would go under the name of this prophet. If this be admitted, it solves the difficulty at once. Dr. Lightfoot quotes Baba Bathra, and Rabbi David Kimchi's preface to the prophet Jeremiah, as his authorities; and insists that the word Jeremiah is perfectly correct as standing at the head of that division from which the evangelist quoted, and which gave its denomination to all the rest.
They did not make one scroll for each author or each book. One scroll would contain multiple books.
/The third section of the Hebrew OT is called the Kethubim or “The Writings.” This was divided into 3 sections, The Poetical Books, The Five Rolls (also called the Megilloth), and The Historical Books.\
There are three books of poetry: Psalms, Proverbs, and Job.
The Five Rolls were books that were read, each at a different feast. SOS was read at Passover, Ruth was read on the day of Pentecost, Ecclesiastes was read at the Feast of Tabernacles, Esther at the Feast of Purim, and Lamentations which was read on the anniversary of the Babylonian captivity.
/Lastly there are the three Historical Books at the end of the Hebrew Canon: Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah (one book), and Chronicles.\
/Therefore, the Hebrew OT contains 24 books compared to our 39.\
The generally accepted date for the completion of the OT Canon is 425 or 424 B.C.
Jesus Christ endorsed the entire OT Canon is one statement in LUK 11:51.
Luke 11:51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against [required of] this generation.
/This endorsement of Scripture takes us from GEN 4:10 (the first book) to 2CH 24:20-21 (the last book in the OT Canon).\
Christ, in His incarnation said, “this is it folks, I wrote these, and by the way I have excluded the Apocrypha.”
Some Bibles contain the Apocrypha which are inserted between Malachi and Matthew.
/The Apocrypha are books written after the close of the OT Canon in 425 B.C. The word Apocrypha means hidden or secret. Their addition was an attempt by the devil to infiltrate God’s Truth.\
The Apocrypha was never a part of the OT Canon.
Neither JC or any other writer NT writer ever quoted it. The historian Josephus excluded it from his list of sacred Scriptures. No mention was ever made of it in any catalogue of Canonical books in the first four centuries.
The Apocrypha never asserts itself to be divinely inspired. No prophets are ever connected with it. The books contain many errors. It teaches doctrines that are contrary to the rest of the Canon.
/The Apocrypha teaches: Prayers and offerings for the dead (2 Macc 12:41-46). Suicide is justified (2 Macc 14:41-46). Salvation by giving money (Tobit 4:11). Cruelty to slaves (Ecclesiasticus 33:25-29). The soul is produced by parents (Wisdom 8:19-20).\
The OT Canon has been well preserved by the Jews and you can have great confidence in its preservation.
New Testament: Canonicity Part 2:
/The History of the NT Greek Canon.\
Until the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the text of the NT, as well as every other ancient book, could be transmitted only by laboriously copying it letter by letter and word by word.
This process is key to understanding the textual criticism of the NT.
In the ancient world people wrote on clay tablets, stone, bone, wood, leather, metals, potsherds, papyrus and parchment (vellum). Of these we find ancient NT manuscripts written on papyrus and parchment.
/Papyrus was mostly used for more ancient books. It survived in warm, dry climates such as the Middle East, but became frail after repeated use.\
[slide: papyus]
Papyrus is an aquatic plant that grows in shallow marshlands and grows to 12 - 15 feet high. The outer pith of the plant is cut away and the tough inner pith is cut to 20 inches in length. Many of these are laid on a table vertically. Another layer is put on top and laid horizontally and then the two layers are pressed and beaten together. The natural juices of the plant glue the two layers together and then it is dried to make a 9 x 15 sheet of papyrus.
They would then overlap the edges of different sheets, pasting them together to make a long scroll which was usually 20 sheets long.
Papyrus was made as early as 3000 B.C. by the Egyptians.
/Parchment or vellum, which became more used in the 4th century, was made from the skins of cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, and was much more durable than papyrus, but more expensive.\
[slide: vellum Codex Vaticanus]
The preparation was slow and complicated. The skin would be stretched and dried on a wooden frame. It would be scraped with a curved knife. It was much more durable than papyrus and could be written on both sides.
Parchment began to take the place of papyrus for the manufacture of the best books at the start of the fourth century A.D.
In the Greco-Roman world literary works were customarily published in the format of a scroll, made of papyrus or parchment. Several books could be incorporated into the scroll that was about 30 feet in length.
The roll was inconvenient to use. You needed a lot of room and two hands to roll and unroll as you read. To find a Bible passage was laborious.
/At the close of the first century A.D. the codex or leaf form of book, came into use in the Church. This is the form of book that we have today.\
You could organize it better, you could write on both sides, which cut down on production costs, and Scripture was easier to locate. It occupied less space, and in fact, pocket sized versions of the Gospels or the Epistles were made for traveling.
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