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Session shall be a short one, and secondly, its primary p- uh, part is devoted to questions. So first of all, I'll take your questions if you make them nice and simple, such that I can answer. Secondly, when we've run out of questions, I shall talk briefly on the matter of the canon of the New Testament. Briefly, I mean that briefly, because the question of canon will, God willing, come up on our next occasion when we consider the Old Testament. And part of our study there must concern itself with the canon of the Old Testament, and not only with the canon of the New.
So I shall say a few things, if there's time, about the canon of the New, but very few, just to establish one or two basic principles. But first of all, your questions, and I'm all ears to hear your questions. Mark? What does eclectic text mean in your reference to AI? Oh, what does eclectic mean? It may- means the word is an adjective, meaning to choose out. And in textual criticism, an eclectic text is the name given to a text that scholars reconstruct on the basis of many different manuscripts.
And they will follow manuscript one so far, but then if they think manuscript two has a better reading in the next verse, they will take the, the, the reading from that manuscript. And then if somewhere else down the line they think that, uh, some other manuscript, manuscript number twenty, has the best reading there, they will take that reading out of that. They choose from many different manuscripts, you see. They don't just follow one. The result is that the text they produce you wouldn't find in any one manuscript, because they have chosen from, uh, uh, uh, from very, uh, a number of different manuscripts in order to reconstruct their text.
That is what is meant by eclectic, and it stands in distinction from a text that is just copied from one manuscript or from a majority of manuscripts that all read the same thing, do you see, practically everywhere. So there are some are following, uh, manuscripts, full stop. They've decided to follow certain manuscripts all the way through, whatever they have, they will follow manuscripts. Whereas the other one is, uh, the critic, the, the scholar, he doesn't just follow one manuscript, he chooses a reading from this manuscript once, that meaning, or that manuscript somewhere else, and his text is chosen out from many manuscripts.
That is eclectic. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Does it? Yeah? Mm-hmm. Mm. And, and sir, on the, on the point, the vital point that you've emphasized today about how, how we know the, that the Word of God is, is authentic and so on. Your, your basic answer to that is, is one that I have, have used as you have explained it to me over the years, that, that if the Lord Jesus says something, we, we believe him, and he believed that, that God's word is true and, and so on. And, but every time I have used anything like that and gone through the person of Christ, my unsaved friends always come back and said, Stuart, you're involved now in a circular argument.
How do you know, know what your Lord Jesus says if it, if you hadn't read it in the Bible, and, and, and yet you're using him to prove that the Bible is true? How, how should we? How should you answer that? Yes, logically, as you say, uh, Stuart, uh, that is circular reasoning, you see. You say you know he said this because it's in the Bible, so you believe that he said this because it's in the Bible, and then on the other hand, you turn around and you say the Bible is true because, uh, yes, he is the Son of God anyway. So it sounds to them like a circular reasoning.
My first answer to that is, yes, it is true. It is circular reasoning. Now, some circular reason is vicious. In the old Latin sense, it is faulty. It is a vicious circle. Mm-hmm. But there are circular reasons that are not vicious, that are necessarily true. Mm-hmm. For instance, how do I know the universe is there? You say the scientists have made experiments and shown it's there.
Oh, really? Did they invent it? Was it there before? Well, of course they didn't invent it. It was there before they started to study it. And we believed it was there long before the scientists came and studied it. Now they can tell us a lot about it. Do you see? But because you're studying the universe, everything that you have about the universe comes from the universe to start with. And must do. You see. And if you say, how do you know this scientist is wrong? Well, you can know he's wrong because if you study the, uh, the universe itself, if studied it rightly, will, will show you he's wrong.
He's misinterpreted the universe. The universe, therefore, becomes the final authority on itself. Mm-hmm. And the God of the universe is like it. And similarly, it's true of the, uh, uh, uh, the New Testament. Yes, you can follow a lot of scientists, and what they say is, is in accordance with the facts of the universe, and so you may trust them and, and may come to think that there are atoms. I've never seen one myself, but the scientist says it is so, and I trust him, and so forth and so on. Do you see? And I'm right to use them and, uh, trust them as a secondary authority.
But in the end, if I say, where did they get their authority from, it's, it has to come from the universe. And you see, an example of it is the early Greek philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, invented the atomic theory and came to the conclusion that the universe, the things of matter in the universe, is formed of atoms that you can't see. And they gave them the name atom because you couldn't split them. They were so tiny you couldn't split them. They were right in saying the universe is com- all the matter is com- in the universe is com- made up of atoms. But they were wrong in saying they couldn't be split. We know they can be.
Do you see? How do we come to know they were wrong? By studying the universe. And the universe eventually came up with the evidence that these scientists were wrong. Do you see? So now, to apply that by analogy, of course, to our Lord, it's good that you consult John the Baptist and and Peter, James, John, the apostles. They will point you to Christ. Not that they were wrong, but ultimately, the authority that they have comes from Christ. Yes? And that's how our New Testament came to be. Mm-hmm. That's why I say it's not a vicious circle.
Listen to what those apostles actually say that Christ said. You must judge yourself whether it's true or not. Listen to what he said. Mm-hmm. And that's why I made a big point of saying that, uh, the central part of the message that we find in the Gospels and in the Epistles is a message that can be traced back to Christ that the apostles didn't invent it, even though they wrote the account. They will show you that they didn't invent this story. In fact, when they first heard it, they objected to it. Namely, the question of our Lord's suffering cross and its purpose, that even when they preached it, Paul admits is a folly to the Greeks, absolute folly, and Paul didn't invent it.
So here is the evidence that it goes back to Christ. And it goes back to him before there was any New Testament. The New Testament will tell you that. It is their claim. Yeah. Does that come anywhere near to... answer that question? It does appear to the outsider to be circular argument, but it's not a vicious circle. Science has to apply many of those circular arguments. Do you see? But the evidence, when looked at, it goes back to Christ.
You see, and so somebody in a paper tomorrow quotes Tony Blair as having said this. You don't necessarily take it for granted that the paper is giving you a fair report of what he said, but you can check it with all sorts of things, do you see, to see whether it does or did not come from Blair. Mm-hmm. Good. Any more questions? No? Islam, uh, has such a high view of their scripture that Muhammad, obviously they have a high view of him as well, but he points people to Quran. Mm. And they debate amongst themselves whether Quran is part of Allah.
Um, so they're extremely high view of scripture, but what we're thinking about here is that Christ is way beyond and beyond scripture. Oh yes. Um, but how high a view do we have of scripture? Like, um, it's God's word, but it's detached from God. Um, what is, what, how high a view do we have of scripture? We, we can't think high enough of Christ, but how high do we think of scripture? Well, uh, yes, that's a very good question. Uh, at the philosophical level, uh, Muslims are in a difficult position. They want to say, and I've had them say it to me when I was in Jordan, that the Quran is eternal.
It existed eternally, and uh, it was dictated to uh, Muhammad all at once, but it existed eternally long before Muhammad, you see. And then, of course, philosophically, they get themselves in a very difficult position because now they believe in two eternal things, God and the Quran, which contradicts Islamic doctrine that there's only one eternal, that's God. Do you see? If you say, what is the difference in Christian thinking? Would you approve of a Christian that put the Bible on on a shelf and bowed down and worshiped the Bible?
Would you, would you approve of that? You don't, do you? No, of course you don't. So then, uh, when it comes to scripture, uh, like creation, the universe didn't always exist. God created it. He himself is eternal. Scripture didn't always exist. In that sense, God spoke it and had his, uh, his, uh, uh, uh, people, chosen people record it.
But scripture didn't always exist. Yes? And we can date the New Testament, for instance, in Isaiah and company. This is a record of what God spoke in those times. Mm-hmm. Does that, does that begin to help? How, how high do you need to be with it? Pardon? Uh, like how much reverence you need to take in actual book of God's word? Oh, I will say yes. Well, if I were talking to a, a, a Muslim, I would try to remember his sensibilities, and I wouldn't put the Bible on the floor, and I wouldn't put another book on top of the Bible, do you see?
Because he has that kind of reverence for the Quran, even if he's never read it, he will, uh, not put it on the floor, and he'll never put another book on top of the Quran. And he thinks that if you believe the Bible is inspired, you wouldn't put it on the floor, and you wouldn't put another book on top of it. So I would try to remember that. I possibly should forget it, but I would try to remember that, you see. But the e- e- extreme for that is if you gave the Bible to a Russian in the nineteen nineties, for instance, when many of them had not seen a Bible all their lives through because they were forbidden under Marxism.
If in the nineteen nineties you had given a Bible to many Russians, they would have kissed it, put it on the shelf along with the icons, and bowed down to it and prayed to it each night. Wouldn't have read it. That, of course, is superstition. Do you see? Yeah? We show our reverence for God's word by reading it humbly and asking God for understanding of it and allowing the Lord to speak through us, through it to us. Do you see? But, uh, uh, we're not to treat it superstitiously.
Secondly, there is a mistake that we can make in dealing with, um, scripture. Our Lord pointed it out to the Jews, John chapter five. Uh, you study scripture because you think that in them is eternal life. But they are they that testify of me, and you will not come to me that you might have life. And that is true, that many of the Pharisees studied scripture, and they study it still, because they will tell you that studying scripture is a meritorious deed, and the more you study scripture, the more likely you are liable to get into heaven at last, by the dint of the fact you've just studied scripture.
And studying scripture is a way to achieve eternal life. Do you see? And our Lord made the point to them, you, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, and in that sense, that is not true. There's many a liberal modernist theologian in universities that study scripture, and they're not believers. Some of them are atheists, of course, self-confessed atheists. Excuse me. The function of scripture, says our Lord, they are they that testify of me. And you will not come to me that you might have life.
It's the Lord Jesus that gives eternal life. I can't get eternal life apart from him just by studying the Bible as a book. As one Irish preacher, and I used to enjoy his preaching because he was quite a theologian in his way, but he was so comical it was difficult not to burst out laughing in the middle of his sermon, but never mind that, you'll see, but I heard him preach on a number of occasions, you'll see, and he used the illustration. Suppose you saw me out in the middle of the country, and I was clinging with my arms around a signpost, and you halted the car.
You think there's something wrong with Gooding now. My, he was always a bit queer, but now this is, I mean, it's what on earth is he doing, hugging this signpost? So you stop the car and come over to me and say, hello, Good evening. Hello. Uh, nice to see you again. Mm-hmm. Yes. Um, uh, just interested me what you were doing, uh, hugging that signpost. And I said, it's obvious, isn't it? Here is Inneskilen. Says so, look. A- a- and I've got Inneskilen. That's what I wanted, that's what I set out, and now I got Inneskilen, you see. You say, is that so? You've got Inneskilen? Yes, and I can tell you how long Inneskilen is.
It's got so many letters in it. That's Inneskilen. You would say, uh, that's very nice. Uh, tell me, uh, uh, have you been feeling altogether well this last week or two? Because I am a stupid, am I not? That isn't in the skillen. That was a signpost to in the skillen. And scripture is a God-given signpost to Christ. And I can't get s- s- eternal life without coming to Christ, gentlemen. Yes? Some people, like the Pharisees, make that mistake.
A lot of academic theology makes a similar mistake. It studies scripture, or it will not come to Christ. On the other hand, in John, the very next chapter, John chapter six, Christ says to his apostle, uh, to his disciples when they walk back, no, w- w- wouldn't come with him. He said, the words I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life. You say, well, how does that fit in with what he said in chapter five? Well, when chapter five, is pointing out the, the folly of those that read scripture but won't come to Christ of whom it speaks.
In chapter six he's saying that his very words that he speaks, they are spirit and they are life, so that God not merely inspired the gospels, but as we read them, Christ speaks to us still. He didn't only speak two thousand years ago and inspire the apostles and the evangelists to write down what he said, but God speaks still through his word. And when Christ speaks his word to our hearts, these are spirit, they are life. Mm-hmm.
It's a question of, of developing a, a, a balanced attitude. Mm-hmm. Any more questions? I want just ten minutes, you see, before we go. Apart, maybe, uh, apart the King James, according to you, which will be the best translation to use? That would be a very difficult question to answer. Uh, apart from the authorized, yes, get a, a, a, a reasonably modern translation. They vary from being towards paraphrase or to being literal translations.
One of the more reasonable modern ones is the English Standard Version, uh, that tries to be, bring English up to date, uh, but not to give way to too many wide, uh, widely dynamic translations as the NIV tends to go to. And it tries to keep the language moderately sedate language and not slangish, do you see? So the English Standard Version is a good one to read. Eh, do you see? Uh, that said, of course, eh, when you, uh, read, if you like, a, a, a, a translation that's very vigorous and a bit of a paraphrase, because it helps you to get the feeling of the thing, by all means read it.
But when it comes to deciding your doctrine, use a translation that is much more literal. Yes? So if reading the NIV you come across a new thought that you didn't know existed before, and this seems marvelous, it's good, a wise thing to do to trans- check it by reading some much more literal translation when it comes to doctrine. But now I want to say just one or two words about the other question that our topics today raise, and that is the question of the canon. C-A-N-O-N. The canon of the New Testament.
Which in popular language refers to the books of the New Testament, how many books should be regarded as being in the New Testament and forming the New Testament. And the difference between those books that are regarded as being, uh, forming the New Testament and books outside the New Testament that are not regarded as being worthy to put into the canon of the New Testament. Now that's a very large subject. It comes up with the s- same question in the Old Testament. Who decides what book should be in the Old Testament, and should the so-called apocryphal books be part of the Old Testament or not.
There's a similar problem with the New Testament, though many Christians are not aware of it. There are many apocryphal books in addition to the New Testament, and I brought along two volumes to let you see how many apocryphal books there are. Two weighty volumes of a New Testament apocrypha. All sorts of gospels of Thomas and gospels of Peter and gospels of Nicodemus and goodness knows what else, do you see? A New Testament apocrypha as well as Old Testament apocrypha. And therefore, um, uh, how do we decide?
Who decided which books should be regarded as belonging to the canon of the New Testament, and which books not? The first thing we have to observe is that there is no verse in the whole of the New Testament that says, when the New Testament is complete, you'll find it has so many books in it. The New Testament does not lay down the extent of the canon. Who decided what book should be in the canon? Here we must notice a very fundamentally important thing.
It was not... the church put books in the canon and thereby conferred authority on them. It wasn't, to put it another way, being in the canon that conferred authority on the New Testament books. It was the opposite way round. Books were regarded as being in the canon because of the authority they possessed before they were put into the canon.
That is a very important thing. And it's important in our witness because some people will tell you that it is the church that gave us the New Testament. That is not true. It's not the church that gave us the New Testament. It was God through the apostles and the evangelists, the, uh, gospel writers, that gave us the New Testament. And the thing is therefore exceedingly, uh, important and absolutely fundamental to get this thing straight.
It was not being put into the canon that conferred authority on the New Testament books. It was the other way round. The books gained their way in acceptance because of their inherent authority, and being widely regarded by Christian people as authoritative documents. They were then put into a list of accepted books. What we now call the canon. Yes? The question comes up, therefore, how soon did the Christians come to accept this particular list of books, such as we now have in the New Testament?
How soon did they come to agree on this matter. The answer to that is, but not all at once. Of course, books written by apostles were accepted. Or books written by a- uh, some people that were, uh, fellow workers of the apostles. So Matthew was an apostle, and John was an apostle. Mark wasn't an apostle, but he is by tradition associated with Peter, and perhaps rightly so, and Luke was a travel companion of Paul's.
There are Paul's letters, and John's letters, and Peter's letters, you'll see, and James and and Jude. Now, James was a brother of the Lord Jesus. So, largely speaking then, it was on who they came from by way of being apostles or so forth, and the inherent authority of what they taught. That eventually secured their place in the canon. But that is why I showed you early manuscripts. That g- show you into a stage when people were beginning to collect the epistles of Paul into one volume.
That, of course, took some time, didn't it? And then the first time, the earliest surviving copy of all four gospels being printed in one volume, and so on. These things took time. I'm not going now to, to, uh, discuss how soon we have evidence of Christians agreeing on a pleasant list of books. It was quite early on that, uh, you begin to find lists of Bible books, New Testament books, being, uh, uh, talked about in the literature. Some books were disputed for a while.
There is no evidence that any book, once accepted, was turned out of the canon. Though at the time of the Reformation, Luther, for instance, didn't like the Epistle of James, though it was in the canon. He had his own reasons for it, of course. Called it an epistle of straw and other such derogatory terms. But I recommend to you two books. First of all, uh, uh, Prof Bruce's The Books and the Parchments, who discusses at length the, uh, question of the canonicity both of the New Testament and of the Old.
Or the much more scholarly work, because this was written for the Christian public, this is a scholarly work by Bruce Metzger. Uh, he was an evangelical believer in his youth and continued to be a believer all his life, and believed, for instance, in the literal historical ascension of Christ and wrote in his technical arc- articles about it, adhered firmly to the canon of the New Testament. Here he discusses at great length, uh, the question of the canon and the when and where of it, you see. Uh, you see.
Um, and particularly his section, if you care to read it, on the inspiration, inspiration and the canon, which comes at, uh, page two hundred and fifty four in his latest edition of his work on the canon. Yes? More than that, I don't want to say at the moment. Uh, Juzi, um, we shall recur to the com- uh, the question, uh, God willing, in three weeks time, when we come to consider mainly the Old Testament, but also the, uh, link problem, the canon of the Old Testament, as well as the canon of the New.
The canon of the Old Testament, of course, is an important thing. And I bewail the present m- movement of evangelicals who want to say that you should include the Apocrypha in the canon. That seems to me to be a serious matter because one of the apocryphal books, apocryphal of the Old Testament now, asserts that it is a good thing to pray for the dead that they might be reli- released from their torments. That fits in well with the purgatory and praying for the dead that you will find in the Roman Catholic Church.
And of course, it fits in well with the superstitions, as you hear almost every, uh, week, uh, when people are killed or blown up by a bomb or something or other, you pray for the departed. Really? What for? So sometimes the very foundation of the gospel is at stake. But that said, I leave it there, hoping, God willing, to come back to the question on our next occasion. But let me now say this, and with this I will really finish. I have brought along these two hefty volumes of the New Testament Apocrypha.
Here they are. Nowadays, you'll find the public talking and thinking as though we Christians never knew about them. So, uh, we get this, uh, new Gospel of Judas, and the BBC tells us merrily, like it loves to do, that now this gospel has been found, you see, and that will alter the very basis of the Christian gospel and give a completely different interpretation and, uh, somewhat destroy, uh, the traditional view of Christianity. As though the discovery of this thing was such news that nobody ever knew about before and nobody ever considered before, as now, of course, it presents a very serious question and challenges the basis of the Christian faith.
That is absolutely nonsense. We have known for centuries of New Testament apocrypha by galore of them. And we can discern and know what was the motivation behind the writing of them. And distinguish apocrypha that were good and sensible books in their day, comments on scripture by well-meaning people. And then superstitious books, such as would tell you that when our Lord was a child, you know, and he was playing with the other children, uh, then like the rest of them, one day he, he made, uh, playing mud pies, of course, like kids do.
And they all molded birds out of the mud, you see. And Jesus molded a bird out of the mud, and you know what? He threw it up in the air, and oh, it became a birdie and flew away. Isn't that nice? Infantile, I should think. As though the Son of God used his miraculous power to make a nice toy. Well, anything that writes that kind of thing is immediately shown to be spurious, late, superstitious, and so forth. There is no miracle in the New Testament of any such kind, of course. And then we are long since aware of what are called the Gnostic writings, the no- writings of Gnosticism.
Some forty years ago plus, well, about thirty year- 30 years ago maybe, a whole lot of Gnostic writings were discovered at Cinnaboski on in Egypt. They're called, called the Nag Hammadi, uh, uh, writings, you see. These are Gnostic books. We've known of it for years. We know what Gnosticism is and was. And the early Christians in the second and third centuries knew all about Gnosticism. Nothing new. Ah, but you see, people don't know it, do they? And so when, uh, the gospel of, of, of Judas suddenly comes to light, I tell you that this is going to upset Christianity.
And then the Da Vinci Code. Well, some people think it's a very good novel. Well, opinions differ, don't they? It struck me as being sim- simple, you know. He- he's got a most exciting thing in nearly every chapter, and all sorts of impossible things happen, you see. Well, if you like that kind of a yarn, go for it, I suppose. But when he talks about, uh, the Christian church having, uh, suppressed all sorts of doctrines, Gnostic gospels, because they were afraid it would upset Christianity. He's talking absolutely piffle. Do you see? But people like to believe it, don't they?
Do you see? The same thing was said about Dead Sea Scrolls. It was rumored that the, the Catholic Church had sat upon the Dead Sea Scrolls and not allowed to them to be published because among the Dead Sea Scrolls there were, uh, some scrolls that would have proved Christianity wrong. Fancy that. And so they they sat on them and wouldn't let them be published. Now, it is true that the scholars who were chiefly engaged, Strugnell and, uh, uh, and the professor from Harvard, J.M. Cross Jr., took an extraordinary long while publishing some of the contents of Cave four, so that in the end the scholarly world revolted against them and demanded that the scrolls be given to other scholars who would get them out to the public.
That is quite true, and I know some of the goings on behind the scenes that led to that explosion among the scholars. And the man who was then appointed as chairman of the, uh, uh, editor- editors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Emmanuel Tov, has been a friend of mine, personal friend of mine, for many years. I knew him as a, as a student, in his student days, you'll see. The idea that the Catholic Church has tried to suppress them because they contain doctrines that would have contradicted Christianity is absolute nonsense. But people love conspiracy theories, you'll see. That is, to my knowledge, I could tell you how it all happened and, uh, and what processes were involved in forcing the hand of those scholars, uh, to, uh, publish the rest quickly.
Nothing to do with, uh, manuscripts that would have destroyed Christianity. People love it that way. Uh, about, uh, 6 weeks or more ago, two months ago maybe, I was invited by a certain Christian man to address the, uh, annual dinner of the Belfast Speakers' Circle. That is a completely secular organization, do you see? And it began life in the air raid shelters of Belfast, where people sat hoping the Germans wouldn't bomb them and talked to each other in the air raid shelters about everything, you know, under the sun to pass the time away, and after the war was over, decided this had been a pleasant experience and they would keep on talking to each other, and they formed this Belfast circle of speakers to practice speaking, both set speeches and extemporary speaking, and to this day they meet and do it, you see, and then they criticize each other's speakers, each other's speeches, and they encourage people to have a go, and even if they're not good at it, they encourage them to say it's the most marvelous thing they ever heard, but please, when you say that again, don't say the same thing and say something a little bit differently, and all
that kind of thing, you see. And this was their annual dinner, and their president this year is a believer, born-again chaplain. And, uh, do you see, he does it because it's an opportunity to get to know folks and to witness to them. He asked me would I speak to them because he thought it was an opportunity, you see, to bring a rag and bone man like me to them, and I might get in a word for the Lord. So I went, you see, and among the things I said was this business in the end, this nonsense of Da Vinci Code and all this kind of absolute nonsense, you see. And I told them what I have just told you. I know the chairman personally of the Dead Sea Scroll Now Committee and why it all was, and it the delay was, and it was nothing to do with the church, the Catholic Church, suppressing documents that they feared would contradict Christianity.
Well, that was that. But afterwards, a gentleman came up to me and said, thank you, but I still believe that it was a Catholic church that tried to suppress it. I didn't say, sir, are you a member of the Freemasons? I fear he was. Because, as you see from the Da Vinci Code, this is a doctrine put around by the Freemasons over many centuries, and the Knights Templar, and all that kind of stuff. But with that, I do really cease, gentlemen. Thank you for your attention today. May God bless you in your studies and in your witness for the Lord.
