Ep. 17 - Do We Have the Right Books in the Old Testament? - Part 2
Episode Transcript
Ep. 17 - Do We Have the Right Books in the Old Testament - Part 2
[00:00:00] JC Schroeder: Hello friends! Today, we have part two of Do We Have The Right Books in The Old Testament? Now, if you haven't listened to part one, that's okay. You can still listen to this one. But in part one, we kind of set up the foundations and the starting point of our discussion of the canon in general and the Old Testament canon. Now here in part two, we're going to deal with the extent of the canon of the Old Testament. What particular books are we going to include or exclude and why? What sort of evidence do we have for, or against something like the Apocrypha or other particular writings. So let's dive back into the super exciting topic about the Old Testament canon. I'm JC Schroeder and welcome to Bite Size Seminary. [00:01:00]
[00:01:02] Scripture Continues and the Canonical Umbrella
[00:01:02] JC Schroeder: All right. So we've got the beginning of the canon. But how do we know about all the rest of the canon? What about the extent of the canon? Great question. Now what's really interesting is that God tells his people, do not add anymore to Scripture. You see this in Deuteronomy 4:2, "You shall not add to the word that I command you nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, that I command you." So here Moses is acting as that mouthpiece, that spokesman for God, as functioning as a prophet to his people. He says don't add to this. Don't mess with this. And they keep the text within the Ark of the Covenant.
[00:01:48] Now what's interesting is that, we see evidence that there is actual additions being made to this text. One interesting one is in Joshua [00:02:00] 24:26, where Joshua adds to the text. And it seems as if he's breaking the rule that was stated in Deuteronomy 4. And you go, what are you doing, Joshua? But what's interesting is that whole passage is viewed as a very positive thing. It shows that Joshua is being obedient and following the Lord and being blessed by the Lord, leading his people to follow the Lord.
[00:02:27] And so it's interesting that he and other individuals begin to add to Scripture. But here's the issue, it's not anyone that can add to Scripture. It's the prophets. They are the spokespeople for God. And when they have more prophets, that equals more Scripture. God continues to work with his people and to speak to his people through his prophets. Now, the prophets, you have an expectation of this [00:03:00] in the Torah. That when prophets come, they better say and agree with what the Torah says, with what has previously been revealed, with that canonical core and that shape of what God has already revealed. If you have something that's not that doesn't adhere to that. You don't agree with it. You get rid of that. It's not a free for all. It's not whatever anyone wants it to be. When you have a true prophet, it has to agree with previous Scripture. And when that prophet speaks, you have more Scripture. And what we see in the trajectory of the rest of the Old Testament is that the prophets specifically are constantly pointing back to the Torah and even indicting Israel and their sins based on what was told of what they should do in the Mosaic Covenant in the Torah.
[00:03:52] Now this time of the prophets, when the prophets are on the earth, it becomes like a canonical epoch.[00:04:00] I get this term from Stephen Dempster. He has a great article about the Old Testament Canon. It's called "The Old Testament Canon, Josephus, and Cognitive Environment." And it's found in a book called The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures edited by D. A. Carson. I'll put it in the show notes. It's a great read. And I like this term that he uses of the "canonical epoch." And the idea here is that during, when you have prophets, you have the ability of Scripture being written. So, the main trajectory of the Old Testament is that the prophets are going to be the spokesman for God. They're going to be the main writers of Scripture. There are some exceptions to this. David, functions prophetically, although he's not a prophet himself, he does function prophetically. You think of some of the authors of the Psalms or of Proverbs. But the idea is that there's this [00:05:00] umbrella time of the prophets where God speaks to his people.
[00:05:05] The Closing of the Canon
[00:05:05] JC Schroeder: Now the key part here is that when there are no more prophets, that means there is no more Scripture. So when you have more prophets, there's more Scripture when there's no more prophets. That means no more Scripture. This is a helpful way to think about the canon of the Old Testament, because it helps us to define where's that end point of the Old Testament. Is it with the 39 books that we have of the Old Testament. The same as the 22 that's in the Hebrew Bible. Should we include other documents like Maccabees, should we include a whole collection? Like the Apocrypha? What do we do with those? Where's the end point? Where's the extent of the canon. That idea of the prophetic umbrella, which is my term, versus the canonical epoch, which has Dempster's term, which is probably better. That is helpful for us thinking [00:06:00] through this issue.
[00:06:01] Now, what evidence do we have? Well, what we do have in some Jewish texts, like 1st Maccabees. 1st Maccabees is a Jewish text. We sometimes think of it as a Catholic text because Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox view 1st Maccabees as being deuterocanonical, meaning they are Scripture. They're canonical, but have a secondary lesser status, if you will. And so sometimes we think of these as more Catholic books than Jewish books. But they are Jewish books and they are reflecting Jewish history. And 1st Maccabees is a very good historical document. And it's interesting, there's a couple of passages at 1st Maccabees that show that they do not think that they are in that prophetic umbrella, canonical epoch time.
[00:06:52] There's a couple of different places where this shows up. I'm just going to read one. This is 1st Maccabees [00:07:00] 9:27. "Thus, there was great distress in Israel, such as, had not been since the time the prophets ceased to appear among them." So there's this perspective among the authors of 1st Maccabees, which has written in the one hundreds BC, roughly in that timeframe. Before Christ, before Christianity, any of them, before any sort of councils or anything like that. That there were no longer, these people functioning as this prophetic role. No more prophets. This gives us the hint that Israel did not see themselves in that prophetic umbrella anymore, in that canonical epoch, that God had stopped giving Scripture.
[00:07:47] A Jewish Perspective from Josephus
[00:07:47] JC Schroeder: Fast forward a little bit to the time of the New Testament. A Jewish historian named Josephus. Very interesting person. He [00:08:00] writes to defend Judaism against some heavy antisemitic behavior within the Roman empire. And he talks about how Jewish Scripture is so much better than Greek religious writing. And what Josephus does is, he explains why Jewish writings are so, so much better than Greek religious writings is because the Greeks, they got just tons of all these books and they contradict one another. It's like, oh no, we got something better. We've got Scripture from God and it's consistent. And everyone agrees that we have these 22 books. Everyone agrees that these are Scripture.
[00:08:37] Now that number 22 might sound odd to us, because we may be used to 39 books in the Old Testament, at least the Protestant view of the Old Testament. Now the 22 that he's referring to and the 39 that Protestants have in their Bible are the same. There's just different ways of counting it. So in the Protestant [00:09:00] Bible we have 1 and 2 Samuel 1 and 2 Kings. Those are one book in the Hebrew Bible. So you have a book called Samuel, a book called Kings. So two separate books instead of four. And you have a bigger compression and collection of different books together. That's where the math comes in, but it's the same books that we have in the Hebrew Bible is what is in the Protestant list of the Old Testament. Now, Josephus references these 22 books. And it's most likely the same that are held by Jews and Protestants today.
[00:09:38] Now, does Josephus overstate his case a little bit. Yeah, probably. He's in polemical mode. And there are, there is evidence that other that other Jews had different lists of Scripture. So it's not across the board, every single one of them. But the fact that he can make that argument [00:10:00] seems to suggest that that particular list of 22, that canonical structure, is the dominant one based on those factors that we've talked about of that covenantal action and the time of the prophets.
[00:10:17] New Testament Evidence
[00:10:17] JC Schroeder: And we have a couple other pieces of information that goes along with this. And this relates to a Christian view of the Hebrew Bible's canonical structure. We have additional information, additional evidence, for how the New Testament views the shape of the Old Testament. After Jesus's resurrection in Luke 24, Jesus is with his disciples and he's giving them one last teaching before his ascension. And Jesus says this, this is Luke 24:44. He says this, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. That everything written about me in the [00:11:00] law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Now it's interesting because he's giving a very typical way of structuring the Old Testament, that Jews of that day would use and continue to use today. He says the law or Torah. The prophets, the Nevi'im. And then he says the Psalms, which doesn't correspond to the third category that Jews use today, the Ketuvim, the writings. He says Psalms, but Psalms is the first book of that section. So perhaps, and I think it's likely that he views this and uses the term Psalms as kind of the gateway for the rest of the category. They didn't have, in the New Testament, they didn't have the term Old Testament or Hebrew Bible to use. They just said Scripture, or they would say the Law, or they would say the Law and the Prophets or the Law, the Prophets and the [00:12:00] Psalms to indicate the shape of the Old Testament. So when Jesus uses this term, Law, Prophets, and Psalms, he seems to be indicating that the Old Testament is restricted to these 22 books or 39 books that we have in our Bible. That nothing else should be added to it and nothing else should be taken away.
[00:12:26] Really when we're thinking of the extent of the Old Testament. We're thinking of, should we include the Apocrypha in the canon or should we not? I lean on the side that we should not. One of the reasons why I would not is that line, that Jesus just gave about the shape of the structure, along with the evidence from 1 Maccabees, Josephus and that prophetic umbrella. But one other piece of evidence that we can add in there is that the New Testament frequently quotes the [00:13:00] Old Testament authoritatively. Scripture says. God says. It's it has this distinct formula to say, this is Scripture. I'm not just quoting random stuff. This is Scripture, what I'm quoting here. Now the New Testament quotes the Apocrypha and references scenes from the Apocrypha, but it never uses that special restrictive formula that it uses to site the rest of Scripture. So that's, this seems to be an indication that the New Testament itself, that Jesus, and the apostles did not see the Apocrypha as being Scripture, and thus not part of the canon.
[00:13:40] New Covenant = New Scripture
[00:13:40] JC Schroeder: Now, one other feature, as we come to the close here, is that God has revealed himself and spoken to his people by making this covenant, this Mosaic covenant with his people. But what's so interesting is that we have further revelation in the prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that God will make a new [00:14:00] covenant with his people, in the future. Now as we're thinking of the new covenant, let's just, there's so much there. But we'll just focus on the canonical implications of that. If this is going to be similar and better than what we had with the Mosaic covenant. What did we get with the Mosaic covenant? We had that specific treaty formula format and with writing. So now we have this expectation that when we get a new covenant, what should we expect? We should get new writings, more Scripture. The prophets come back. And so this is what we'll discuss more in the next episode, when we talk about the canon of the New Testament.
[00:14:44] Conclusion
[00:14:44] JC Schroeder: So again, this appears to be something that is quite grassroots, organic to how God works with his people. It's not something that is imposed on this text of Scripture. But [00:15:00] arrives, becomes from how God acts towards his people. And really God's very nature as being a speaking God. And so, as we conclude here, the canon is a fantastic reminder of God's providence in preserving his word, working through these individuals and even communities. We have the books God desires for us. That is so amazing and so wonderful, shocking, and life-giving. But it is also a reminder that God is a speaking God. He delights to reveal himself to mere mortals and to top it all off. He delights to enter into relationship with us. So when we're talking about the canon, we're talking about hearing the wonderful and beautiful voice [00:16:00] of our God.
[00:16:01] Outro
[00:16:01] JC Schroeder: That's all we have for today. Be sure to check out the show notes if you want to check out further resources about the canon of scripture. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really does help others find this material. You can also sign up to receive episodes, emailed directly to you at bitesizeseminary.com and you can connect with me there or on Facebook or Twitter, all the links are in the show notes. Thank you for your time. Also be sure to check out the upcoming episode about the New Testament canon. We'll see you then. Thanks for listening.