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Collaborated with those, all these people, and you want ques- you'd like to ask questions. Is that is, have I got it that way? Maybe just a couple of questions. Pardon? Give people space for a couple of questions here. Space for a couple of questions. I see, yes. Yeah, yes, sir. I wa- I was asking downstairs, if I have to speak into this, as to the meaning of the word apocrypha, and and we do know that it means hidden, or that it it means that, but the the the deeper aspect of the question is is this: why are the why were those books ever called the Apocrypha?
Yes. Yes, as you say, sir, the the word means hidden away, but it came to be used, uh, in a different sense, and I'm not quite sure myself what, um, what really the sense is. Are you? No, no, they they it is, uh, nor- uh, it's a, uh, it's immediate meaning apokrifa, eh, is normally mean something krifa hidden away, apo, apo krifa juzi. Sometimes it is used of the books of hidden wisdom, particularly among mystics, but that is not the meaning claimed for these particular books.
So why they continue to use it is a, is a mystery to me. I would have to refer you to the technical works of, of Metzger and, uh, and Bruce on the Apocrypha and so on. Mm-hmm. Uh. Who? Even, even Metzger says Yes, that's right. He doesn't know why. It's a bit of a mystery. Yeah. Eh, do you see? And, uh, uh, you'll notice that the modern Roman Catholic scholars, particularly have abandoned, they abandon the use, uh, they talk about the deuterocanonical books, and then if they use the Apocrypha, they use them of the many, many other books outside that list of so-called apocryphal books.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, as a scholar, what in your judgment, like, how confident are you as to the reliability and the faithfulness of transmission of the whole Old Testament as we have it today? How confident are you in it, in a scholarly sense? Oh. I'm a hundred percent certain, sir, that it is the word of God. Yes?
And if I add as originally given, I do not thereby mean to say, uh, that we have serious doubt as to the contents of the Old Testament, you'll see. For instance, if you look at the Hebrew numbering of the Psalms, they are different from our numbering of them. If you look at some of the Septuagint manuscripts, the Septuagint have one hundred and fifty one Psalms. And the question is, how do they get the extra one, do you see?
But talking, uh, substantially of the thing as a whole, I do not myself think that there is any, uh, doubt o- o- of the contents of the Old Testament as a whole, do you see? As to the meaning of some of it and how it should be translated, uh, do you see? Yes, there are places where the, uh, the meaning of phrases i- is in doubt. I was looking at, yes. In Exodus chapter seventeen verse six.
And he said, the Lord hath sworn, the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. But that first phrase, the Lord has sworn, in the authorized, because the Lord has sworn, in the revised, the Lord hath sworn, represents a Hebrew for a hand on, or you could possibly translate the preposition on as or or against, for a hand on the throne of the Lord, or a hand against the throne of the Lord.
The question is, what does the, uh, uh, Hebrew mean? Is still debated to this very present day, is it not? Does it mean the hand upon the throne of the Lord? God saying, I have lifted up my hand, which is a way of taking an oath. Or is it, uh, uh, as the NIV suggests, for hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord? Namely, Moses sitting upon the rock, and he lifted up his hands, and poor old boy was tired.
Uh, Aaron and Hur came alongside and held up the hands as a gesture of supplication to the throne of the Lord. Is it talking about that? Or would you follow the, the scholar Barthelemy, who says it means a hand has been raised against the throne of the Lord, namely Amalek. Now, there are, in that sense, uncertainties of what the Hebrew m- may mean, do you see? There are things of that order, do you see? There are doubts of, uh, in various places of text, whether the Hebrew should be read with these vowels or perhaps with some other vowels.
There are sometimes doubts about whether, uh, a letter has been rightly, uh, transcribed. Uh, the letter R in Hebrew is a thing like this, Josie, uh, just a little curve at the top, top line coming round a little bend. The letter D is the same thing, except the top line protrudes a little bit, and then the down thing. And in some manuscripts they get confused, of course, because they are so similar, and the eye of a copyist, uh, confuses them. And therefore, many places you will find suggestions in the footnotes, if you read the NIV or something else, that the word might be this.
The Septuagint has taken it as that. And it's a question of reading what was there originally, yes? There are multitudes of questions like that, practical questions, do see. But taking the scripture as a whole, if you say, what is my attitude to it? I say, I believe it is the word of God, uh, uh, the word of God in toto as originally given. We were not made any promise that God would supervise all the characters, uh, the copyings of the, uh, manuscripts and so on, and guaranteeing to us that we shall always have a perfect copy.
There is no such guarantee. But from our side, we have to recognize that there are some uncertainties of that order. They don't cast doubt upon the fact that ori- as originally given, uh, this was the, uh, revealed word of God, transmitted by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Yeah? Mm-hmm. I would add, gentlemen, uh, do you see, while the the microphone is being transported, that there is another way, uh, uh, in which the word of God can convince us. And that is, as we read it, not simply as a concatenation, a string of facts, but we perceive its coherence, and that it is, uh, devised by God as a coherent account.
Now, what that means I cannot now pause to describe to you, but in my mind that is a very important thing, uh, do you see? Eh, truth, one of its marks is coherence. Truth must be a correspondence with the facts. We rightly look to see the historical element, and does this correspond with the facts as we are known in history? But, uh, truth is also a question of coherence. Yes. And, uh, uh, in saying that, I mean there are other avenues for which, by which we, we, uh, come to see that the Bible is God's truth.
Mm-hmm. I, uh, I didn't want to go over what you did last session, but, uh, in asking another question about the Apocrypha, um, how would you see its use, or is there any use for it in shedding light on certain things in the Old Testament? Like, for example, uh, you have the the added letter of Jeremiah, um, and Le- Jeremiah's secretary's book in the Apocrypha. Do they cast any light on what we have in the canonized book of Jeremiah? Should they be used to maybe have some sort of background or an insight into the character of Jeremiah? E- just because they're not canonized, are they, they're still reliable in the same way you s- study the classics?
They're reliable to that extent? Well, I would, I would use the word useful. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, the extra books are a mixed bag, as we have seen. Uh, some of them are very useful, uh, do you see? And so are many a book that's not in the canon at all and not in the Apocrypha at all. They're very useful in the sense that they do depict the attitude of the people that wrote them at that time, you see, eh, and therefore, uh, useful to know how much of Baruch is, uh, im- uh, reliable as a witness to Jeremiah, you would first have have to ask, uh, what is their own essential authority?
I mean, does it go back to the man that was Bay- uh, Jeremiah's scribe, or do they go back to somebody who was purporting to write as though he were Jeremiah's scribe? You have a similar problem, for instance, just to illustrate the point, in the Gospel of Nicodemus, one of the New Testament apocryphs. If this were a book written by Nicodemus, it would be exceedingly interesting, even though it wasn't inspired, yes? To know what he himself thought, uh, do you see? That would be interesting. But it is highly doubtful whether the Gospel of Nicodemus, uh, was written by Nicodemus that we know from scripture, do you see? It's, uh, more like a historical novel under the name of Nicodemus.
Baruch might be a very different thing. It might seriously be the record of Jeremiah's scribe, do you see? And therefore he's worth reading, do you see? The question of its authority, however, would, would be foundational and would come at all lines of the story, you see, yes? Jeremiah had a second scribe, you may remember. Mm-hmm. The book of Jeremiah tells you so. Mm-hmm. There has been a lot made of what is called the intertestamental literature in modern scholarship of the New Testament. Uh, do you see? It seems to me that very often it goes too far, because presently, from using it as an interesting insight into, uh, some of the thinkers of the day, the distinction between it and scripture tends to get obliterated.
But as an interesting, uh, comment on your question in, uh, Beckwith's book, talking about many of the apocryphal books, he points out that, uh, uh, uh, they, you can tell by reading them what source they came from. Whether the source was a Pharisaic, whether they come from Pharisees, or whether they come from Sadducees or from Essenes and such like people. You could tell a book, for instance, that talked about angels and the resurrection, uh, Josie, that it didn't come from the Sadducees because they didn't believe either.
So it is very interesting, uh, for- they are very interesting from that point of view. Mm-hmm. Some of the people here today, Doctor Huhne, don't speak Hebrew, uh, aren't some of the people here today don't speak Hebrew, they aren't fluent, and probably Greek as well, but we find ourselves challenged, um, in Bible study with, uh, Greek words and Hebrew words, and the best some of us can do is, uh, we get stuck in the Strong's Concordance and Vine's Dictionary and all these different things, and, um, we know that scholars despair sometimes at the fact that we sound- try to sound authoritative on different little Greek phrases and words, and, um, they kind of get distressed that we do more damage sometimes with, uh, limited knowledge of these languages.
How do we minimize the amount of mistakes that we make and messes? Well, I sit alongside you, my boy. I'm not an expert in Hebrew myself. I have to know how to use it. I have to know what they're talking about. And that means understanding some of the structure of the language, so that if a writer says that this Hebrew verb should here be, it's a nifil or it's a hithpeil or whatnot, and should therefore have this particular, uh, meaning to the verb, then I have to know what they're talking about, know the structure of the language, do you see? Knowing how to help myself, therefore.
Eh, and i- i- in that sense, it's useful to know if you're going to talk with some authority on Hebrew words, then, uh, I like you and you like me, we have to depend upon the experts. It's good to listen to them, and so that we know what they're talking about, yes? Do you see what I mean? Mm-hmm. If I were to cite medicine, and you see, and you and I were to cite medicine amongst ourselves, and I say, what's wrong with you? And you say, well, it's, I've got something wrong with my diaphragm. It would be good if you knew what the medics meant by a diaphragm.
You see what I mean? There's no reason why we should leave it all to the experts, you know. In no subject. You will have noticed that in a court of law, the people that decide are not the experts. It's the jury. Who are entrusted to deal with the evidence. So every reason why we should think about the original languages, only to be careful. And in that instance, we know a great deal more about Greek, and Hebrew for that matter, now than we knew one hundred and fifty years ago, do you see?
So, um, we have to be careful to distinguish between language, grammar, syntax, and theology. Yeah? For instance, some people will use Wigram's, uh, Bible and say that, uh, here the tense is in the perfect, and the perfect means an action done with eternal results. Ah. Well, the perfect does ins- i- i- indicate an action that was, has been done and has results.
But to slip in the word eternal is to add something that the language itself doesn't have. Do you see? It doesn't carry necessarily eternal. Uh, the man says to his wife, I've done what you said, I have painted the walls pink. That's a perfect tense, and that result is eternal? Well, perhaps your wife wouldn't agree. Next year she'll want it green. So see, we had to be careful, uh, in adding on the theology to the language.
If you like to say, on the evidence of scripture, this result is eternal, the work is finished, it is finished. Now you can go on and say, and we know, of course, from the context and from elsewhere in scripture, the result is eternal. But simply to base the eternal bit on the Greek would be to go beyond what the language implies, yes? It's that kind of thing where we have to be careful. But, uh, yeah, um, develop the habit of being modest and saying, according to some experts, this is that and that is this.
Yes? I have to do that in most of what I say, to see. And more work on our part to try and understand the experts. Pardon? More work on our part to try and understand the experts. Omri. Yes, our blessed Lord said at one stage, work not for the meat that perishes, but work for the meat that endures. Gentlemen, it is work. Work for the meat that endures. Yeah.
That is important. Yes, many a time we read scripture and God gives us much encouragement by his spirit and shows us this and that and the other. But on our side, we are expected to work. Good. And use up-to-date dictionaries and use dictionaries and word, um, uh, word dictionaries. Uh, to see, try to use the up-to-date ones. Vine's dictionary of New Testament terms is very good. But Greek grammar has moved on since Vine taught, yes, to a deeper understanding.
It was very good to start with. Use it, by all means. Huh. No more questions forthcoming? No. Good. It's time to go to, to, uh, to dinner and then to sleep. Just let me observe one more thing. On the question of the interpretation of the Old Testament, and one particular, uh, division of the interpretation of the Old Testament.
It's common knowledge, of course, that in the course of the centuries, many Old Testament passages, stories, institutions, and such like have been interpreted by preachers as types of New Testament truth. The method is called typology. Do you see? That has been very, very common in, uh, various times, and particularly, eh, among conservative scholars, treating Old Testament narratives and things and institutions as types.
Sometimes that method of interpreting Old Testament has been carried to extremes. Like one critic said of the ark, it was two and a half cubits by one and a half by one and a half or something, and that indicated that the half has not yet been told. Which was wickedly sinister, wasn't it? Uh, uh, cynical, I mean to say. There has been a reaction against that. In many Bible schools and elsewhere, students have been warned that we must not say that anything in the Old Testament is a type, unless the New Testament explicitly says it's a type.
Now, people who teach students in that fashion admit, of course, that some Old Testament stories are interpreted in the New Testament as types. Witness Paul in Galatians about Hagar and Ishmael and Sarah and so. But they say they were apostles and had authority to tell us what is a type and what isn't. We have no such authority. And therefore, unless the New Testament explicitly indicates that such and such a story is a type, we mustn't interpret it as though it were a type.
That would mean, gentlemen, that the story of Genesis twenty two, Abraham's offering of Isaac, that you will often have heard spoken of and interpreted as a figure, as a picture of the Father and Son going to the altar, as the Father and the Son going to Calvary, God providing the sacrifice, the Lamb of God. In other words, an interpretation that uses it as a type. If it were true that we mustn't, if we would go- be good expositors and exegetes, we mustn't say anything is a type if the New Testament doesn't say it is, then it would rule out that interpretation completely.
This would have wide-ranging effects, of course. Because that has sometimes been taught as though it were authoritative rule, uh, uh, uh, uh, on how we should interpret the Old Testament. Uh, I want to protest. Yes, I agree that there has been much fanciful interpretation of Old Testament under the name of typology. But secondly, I want to make the point that typology is only one way the New Testament ha- use, uh, one way in which the New Testament uses the old.
Its use of the old is exceedingly varied. I want just to list you some different ways in which the New Testament uses the old. And I shall not have time to explain what I mean by them, but I just want to cite them to remind you of the wide use by the New Testament of the old. There are, of course, straight quotations of laws, principles, exhortations, promises, characters, events.
Thou shalt do no murder, says the Old Testament. Thou shalt do no murder, says the New Testament. You must honor your parents, says the Old. You must honor your parents, says the New, and so forth. There are formal comparisons, similes and metaphors. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. That is a simile, gentlemen, a comparison, if you like. It isn't saying that the one thing is a type of another.
It is drawing a similarity, an analogy between them, if you like. Formal comparisons, similes, and metaphors. A metaphor is when you use a phrase and don't say it's a comparison, formally say it is, but use a phrase that originates in one area of experience and now is applied to another. So Peter says, gird up the loins of your mind, does he not? Now, minds don't have loins.
And anyway, many modern people don't know what a loin is if they should meet one. And they're not in the habit of girding up their loins anyway. So you first of all have to understand what the situation was in real life from which the metaphor is drawn. Do you see? And then how, what it means when it is applied. So if in English I say he hit him for six. Huh. What do you mean for six? For six what? Of course, you would know immediately what is the literal world from which that is drawn.
Hit him for six is from what world? Cricket, of course, yeah. You get six if you hit a ball above the bound- beyond the boundary, yes? Without touching the ground. Yeah, hit him for six. So the metaphor, he hit him for six. he knocked his argument for six. Do you see? Now it's a metaphor. Yes. Mr. So-and-so always likes the limelight. In the wickedness of my heart, I used to get some of my students to translate that into Latin. It was wickedness indeed. Because the dear students didn't know what limelight was to start with.
And of course, the metaphor has died out in English. Limelight is a certain very powerful light that used to be used on the stage to be trained on the leading actor. And to say Mrs. So-and-so loves the limelight simply means she loves all attention put on her, do you see? It's a metaphor then. Gird up the loins of it is a metaphor. What on earth does it mean? And why does Peter use it in that context? It's a metaphor. It is taken, of course, from the Passover, in which those who ate the Passover couldn't eat it just any old how.
They had to eat it their loins girt, staff in their hand, shoes on their feet. Why does Peter use that metaphor now to apply it to us? And what does it mean when it's applied to our minds? Gird up the loins of your minds. Then the New Testament uses the oldest case law, as a lawyer would cite case law or common law. Abraham was justified. Oh yes, how? And on what ground? And on what principle? Well, by faith. Now that's not a type, gentlemen.
That isn't a type of anything. Abraham was a chappy who walked around on two legs like we do, and he was literally justified before God, and he was justified on the principle of faith. Yes? And, uh, it set a precedent, a legal precedent. Anybody that's going to be justified can be and must be justified as Abram was. That's case law, legal precedent. There is, uh, analogy, as I say, inference and legal paradigms. Talking to the Christians at Corinth, Paul quotes the Old Testament law, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that really, uh, uh, uh, treads out the court.
What's that got to do with anything. Well, it's actually what the lawyers in that day would have called a legal paradigm. Because the lawyers of those days, both Latin and Hebrew, would have said that when the laws were laid down, instead of trying to cover every particular possible case of this principle, they would cite one big case, one situation in which the law applied, which then became an example for all the other similar cases. Do you see? It is a paradigm, an example.
So the farmer was told he wasn't to muscle the ox that laid out the corn. The ox working for his master, producing the thrash corn for the master, must be allowed himself, the ox himself, to profit from the work he did for the master. Yes? This was not written to the ox, of course. It was written to the master, who benefited from the work of the ox. Writing to the Christians at Corinth, Paul is making the point that they who work for the church at Corinth spiritually work for them, from whose labors the church profits, must remember this legal paradigm.
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox. The ox was allowed to profit, eat from the work it did. It is applied to Christian wor- workers, the church's attitude to Christian workers. Then, of course, there are the straightforward fulfillments of predictions and prototypes. It was prophesied that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. Micah chapter five. he came from Bethlehem. But there are fulfillments of prototypes.
When our Lord was at the Last Supper, he said, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until I, until it be, I've desired to eat this Passover with you. Uh, uh, I will not eat the, eat of it until the Passover be fulfilled. What did he mean? The Passover wasn't a prediction. The Passover was a ceremony that made you remember the past. Wasn't a prediction. How could that be fulfilled, therefore?
It was what you would call a prototype that was eventually fulfilled at a much higher level. The principle of redemption, freedom through the blood of a sacrifice. In the case of Israel and Egypt, freedom from the destroying angel through the blood of a sacrifice, the lamb's blood slain and poured out, was going to be fill- fulfilled at a very higher level when our Lord died to free us from the wrath of God through the shedding of his blood. It's a fulfillment, not of a prediction, but of a, um, uh, prototype.
And then, just to mention two more, and the time is now gone, but there are such things as explicit allusions. What do you mean? Well, says Jude of certain false teachers, they've gone in the way of Cain. They have poured themselves out, eh, in the folly of, uh, Balaam, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah. Allusion explicit to three Old Testament rebels, Cain, Korah, Balaam, and Korah.
Okay. It's an allusion to the Old Testament. But you will see, gentlemen, that if you're going to understand the allusion, you'll have to work hard on the Old Testament. If I said of so and so, Mr. McAdam has behaved like a Hitler. Well, of course, you would know what I'm meaning, because you happen to know Hitler. If I said he behaved like Korah, what would that mean? These are allusions to the Old Testament. You'll not understand what Jude is talking about, about the heretics that were in his day, unless you know what Cain stood for, what Korah stood for, and what Balaam stood for.
They were all false men in the context of religion. It was in the context of religion that Cain murdered his brother. It was in the context of religion that Balaam attacked Israel. It was in the context of religion that Korah rebelled against Moses and Aaron. Explicit allusions. And then, of course, there are implicit allusions and many other things. Implicit allusions? Let me cite one.
To him that overcometh, says our Lord, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Oh yes. Paradise of God, you say, it's heaven, isn't it? Well, more or less, yes. Oh. And if you should happen to know that the word in Greek paradise is the Greek for the Garden of Eden. Oh. Ah. So this, oh. I see this is an implicit allusion, is it, to the Garden of Eden? Well, it could be, couldn't it? For the tree of life originally was in the Garden of Eden, yes?
And when man sinned, he got moved out of his place, didn't he? Out of the garden. Says our Lord to the church at Ephesus, if you don't repent, I shall remove your lampstand out of its place. And adds, to him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise, not now the Garden of Eden, but the paradise of God, as described in the last chapters of the book of the Revelation. There are then, and I cite these, some of these examples of the many ways in which the New Testament uses the old.
It will include typology, of course, but it does include a lot of other things as well. And I would recommend it to you, my good brothers, that in your study of the Old Testament, we should not confine ourselves merely to typology, important though typology is, but we should look for the other, many other ways in which the New Testament uses the old. It only remains for me to ask, uh, to wish you God's blessing on your summer, on all your activities, and in the midst of your many activities, God grant you a good holiday.
Very much.
