Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

We've been going through, kind of taking a walk through Old Testament history. This time we're going from Solomon to the end of the Old Testament period, okay? And we'll be working just through the handout, which is one of the reasons why you want to look through that. The top of page one has the kind of general time outline that we've been working with here.

So this would be, you see on the top handout, Saul, David, and Solomon. And each reigned about 40 years, and then the kingdom divided. So this would be right after David, then you got Solomon. Now, we got David and Solomon. Does David and Solomon end up being important biblically?

You say yes. Anybody debate that? Can't we stir up some contention here? I see, okay. What is the big issue with, you know, David and Solomon? I mean that was 3,000 years ago and land far away. What's the big deal with David and Solomon? Yeah, Christ was descended from them, and that's according to prophecy, right? Even by divergent lines. Pardon? Even by divergent lines, not the same line clear down through. By divergent lines. Okay, what do you mean by divergent lines? Well, through Mary, they were descended from David, and through Joseph David. As well, yes. Yeah. Okay, so he trained for 40 years. There's David and Solomon. One final correction, of course, that was legally from Joseph, even though he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Now, what happened after Solomon? Everything just go into a void, a black oblivion. What's that?

Yes, the kingdom was divided, and that's what you see at the bottom part of page 1. The kingdom was divided. What we have there is 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles give the life of Solomon. And what you have there is 971 and 931. You'll find some slight variation in those dates. the reign for Solomon, but those are generally agreed upon and slight variations we won't concern ourselves with. And then the kingdom was divided. Why did the kingdom divide after that? Just for fun? Or was there a reason?

Both David and Solomon were warned not to go and have all kinds of wives and concubines. So what did they do? They had wives and concubines. Solomon, between the wives and the concubines, a thousand. And one of the problems with having all kinds of wives and concubines is a lot of it was done for the sake of political arrangements. Hey, I'll marry this wife in order to assure that we'll be militarily and politically in alignment here. And so he had between the wives and concubines a thousand of them, which the Lord had warned him, don't do that. And so the kingdom was divided. What are some of the things that Solomon was known for? He was known for wisdom.

Okay, and what else? Yeah, Stan? You built a temple. Do you have a date for that? The date for the temple construction? No, I don't. The one that Solomon built? I was just curious. Yeah, I don't have a date for that. That takes like 20 years? Yeah, in other words, it took quite a while. But I don't have a specific date for it. We do have the date for the second temple there, but not the date for the first one.

So then the kingdom was divided. What you will see is we have at 931, the end of Solomon's reign was the time that civil war broke out between the southern tribes, that's the seven tribes, right? The southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and then the other tribes that moved north, or remained north, and that was called the Nation of Israel. So then it was called the Divided Kingdom. Judah on the south, and the other tribes on the north.

So then you have this divided kingdom timeline here, which I think gives you the big outline. It shows the books in which the account was written for each one. Then we have the line of kings, and what you'll have, this is on page three. This is the line of kings for each of the kingdoms. That's all the detail. We won't be going over the detail. There won't be a test on it. However, I will ask you to look on the top of page 2. We have a half page chart there that is worth looking at.

The Northern Kingdom, called the Kingdom of Israel, and also Israel had a nickname, the nation of Israel, the Northern Kingdom had a nickname. Anybody tell me what that is? No, that was a designation that came later. but it had a nickname, Ephraim, so you will find that in the Old Testament. And it's named after a prominent tribe. The southern kingdom of Judah is named after a prominent tribe. So that's an interesting pattern that you'll see for both of them. They each were named after a prominent tribe.

Of the northern kingdom, which continued to 722, It lasted just over two centuries. It was an unmitigated disaster. It had a couple of different capitals, political capitals, so we have their Bethel, which is only 12 miles north of Jerusalem. So here's the two capitals of opposing nations just 12 miles apart. Nineteen kings during that time, all of them bad. Some of them really bad. Right? So that's real simple. How many good kings were there in the Northern Kingdom? Zip. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Right?

They were all bad. There were nine dynasties because they died nasty. Right? There were nine dynasties because they died nasty. And I'm not kidding. They were just nasty, and one of the reasons for nine dynasties is that they would get killed off. There would be all this squabbling, and, no, I'm in charge. No, I am. You are no longer in charge. You're dead.

One of them only reigned for a few months. That was it. So, nine dynasties, and the violent deaths, about half. of the kings died a violent death. The character of the kings? None godly. Zip. Everyone bad. Can anybody tell me who was the worst of the worst of the kings of the Northern Kingdom? Ahab. Ahab was the worst of the worst. The wife Jezebel. So he was the worst of the worst, but they were all bad.

Now, Judah The southern kingdom, notice that the starting dates for the two kingdoms are the same, but Israel ended much sooner. The northern kingdom ended much sooner. The southern kingdom was begun with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, however, A lot of times the people who were in the Northern Kingdom that had some kind of conscience, that had some kind of understanding, this isn't going very well, they would head to the Southern Kingdom when they had a chance and move to the Southern Kingdom. So it ended up, though the Southern Kingdom started with just two, Judah and Benjamin, Though just those two tribes were the starting tribes, eventually all of the tribes were represented in the Southern Kingdom.

So, did you ever hear about the lost tribes of Israel? There aren't any. There aren't any. All of the tribes ended up having representatives go to the south, that's part one. Part two is that the tribes that the Assyrians moved away, we know where they went. So there are no lost tribes of Israel, that's mythology. Yeah, Tom? It's interesting that they were identifiable into New Testament times, including certain people who, one, found out about the Yeah, essentially the tribal locations by New Testament times were all scrambled.

Let's take a look. Your backsheet should be color two sides. The first side, page one, shows the range of the kingdom of David and Solomon. It's basically kind of amazing heading up all the way up to the Tigris-Euphrates River system and continuing all the way down to the Gulf of Aqaba at the very south part there, Ezean-Geber. That area is being excavated to see if, because they have found various kinds of mining works, to see, first of all, what was it? With the possibility, not been confirmed, possibility that the mines of Solomon, King Solomon's mines, you heard about that? Maybe those mines there down right near the Gulf of Aqaba. So Solomon had quite a kingdom that split, and now let's turn over to the flip side. They didn't keep it all when they divided.

What happened is, as the civil war took place, they were not able to hold off the enemies. So you'll have on page two of this colored printout, the bottom part shows the area that was Judah, and the top part there shows the area that was Israel. Greatly diminished, greatly diminished from the domain that they had under Solomon. They lost ground because they put their military efforts and forces into fighting one another rather than fighting the enemy. They had enemies of neighboring countries that even under David and Solomon remained, but continued even after they were split into the Northern and Southern Kingdom. The Philistines, you see that there on the map, Philistia, right along the coast, they remained as an enemy. And so the Philistines on the southern coast next to Judah continued to be a problem.

And then up to the north, Tyre, which was supposed to have been a city captured by the tribes. Tyre never was captured by the Israelites. Not under David and Solomon, and not even close under the Northern Kingdom. Yes? The Philistines, where are they from? Are they Jewish? The Philistines were a sea people, not Jewish at all.

Gentile? Gentile. Most definitely Gentile. And the same with like Tyre up in the north. Gentile, like Canaanites. Okay, yeah, Tom? Yeah, I think you're talking about the, not the Philistines, but the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians. Yes. No, different peoples. But both of them either got there or were famous for being seagoing peoples. Yes. They were supposed to take these people out. Supposed to drive them out and they didn't. In fact, even under David and Solomon was the greatest domain that they had. They never drove them off. You'll see this map. It still shows a slice of Philistia. Yes? What groups do the Philistines, the Canaanites, and the Phoenicians fit into? Are they halites? Are they what? What of the three groups? Are they halites or what are they?

No. There are combinations of Japhethites going over to Europe. The Philistines, this is one of those things where archaeologists and anthropologists will kind of debate about where they come from. There's some thought they even came from Greece. Ancient Greece. Pardon? Yes, right. And then to the north, you've got the Phoenicians and I believe they're a... Pardon? Well, there may be some part of it, but there also may be some mixture there as well. So at any rate, and then you have Moab and Ammon, those are descendants of Lot, so they're Semitic, right? So you've got combinations of different groups that are all surrounding them, but they were all to be driven off.

And the Jews never did that. They never followed through on that. So now, Let's finish looking at the top of page two. What we have here is the kingdom of Judah. The southern kingdom had a much longer duration, about a century and a half in round numbers. Their capital remained in Jerusalem during the entire time. Twenty kings and one dynasty.

I don't know if any of them died nasty. Yes, they had close calls. What's amazing is that the line stayed one continuous line with all the different threats that were presented. Four violent deaths. Eight godly, twelve ungodly kings. So with the Northern Kingdom, how many were godly? None. Even with the line of David, less than half of the kings in that line were godly. Eight out of twenty. So what you see here, here are the two kingdoms. Eventually, they both got taken out. It was the Assyrians that took out the northern kingdom. That's the one you see ending in 722. The Assyrians came in. Now, the Assyrians were very, very nasty.

It was interesting. I went with Bruce Beatty three years back now and on our way to Uganda we stopped at the British Museum. In the British Museum they had portions of some of the Assyrian palace wall reliefs showing some of the battles that the Assyrians had against the Jews and some of the other, actually, tortures that they did. So you imagine having your palace and you've got all this torture and wore on the walls.

The Assyrians did things like this. They would peel people's skin off and then pour salt water on it. Not on the skin, on the open flesh. The belief of the time was that if someone's bones were ground up that they couldn't go into the afterlife. So the Assyrians, to be cruel, would force people to grind up their ancestors' bones in order to prevent them from going into the afterlife.

So the Assyrians were profoundly cruel. You can imagine why Jonah did not want to offer repentance and lifting of judgment. against the Assyrians. And you can imagine that once he went there, he was disappointed that the Lord held off on the judgment against them, because they were profoundly cruel people.

The northern kingdom was attacked by Assyria and taken out. In fact, we say there are no lost tribes, because one, a number of the tribes all of the tribes eventually had somebody moving into the southern kingdom, so that they're all the tribes represented in the southern kingdom, and the places where the Jews from the northern kingdom were taken to are all named. We know where they are. So there are no lost tribes. The Assyrian philosophy, and we'll go into this some more, the Assyrian philosophy was scramble people. Take people from here and move them to here. Mix them up with the people over here.

And hence we get the Samaritans. The Samaritans, a mixture of some Jews that remained with Gentiles that had been moved in. So that we don't like the Samaritans. because they're a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. We don't like the Samaritans, we won't go into their land, continued in the New Testament times.

Another thing that came from the Assyrians was Aramaic. Aramaic was something that got established with them. Okay, and one more thing, Judah was under the Assyrian empire, not because they were fully conquered, but because the kings of Judah agreed to pay off the Assyrians in order to, you know, we'll pay you, just don't attack us. And they got to keep their line of kings, but they had to pay off the Assyrians. the one major confrontation, and we covered this when we studied Isaiah chapter 37, the major confrontation was the Assyrian king Sennacherib came to assault Jerusalem.

And anybody tell me what happened when he came to assault Jerusalem? Yes? Remember? Yeah, they had 185,000 of these Assyrian soldiers wiped out overnight. And so rather than any kind of an attack, they came there ready to have some kind of an attack and weren't able to carry it out.

And this was when Hezekiah was king. He was one of the good kings, one of the good kings. So the Assyrians took out The Northern Kingdom, it was the Babylonians later, the next empire, that took out the Southern Kingdom. So that's where you see the Southern Kingdom ending in 586. Yes? So you see the King's Highway on there that goes right through this particular area. required that, you know, from Assyria or Babylon, whichever one was in power, was going to the denial area in Egypt? Is that why that highway's there?

Why Israel became such an important landmass? Yeah, you had two things going on. One is commerce. Between Egypt and the northern nations then? Yes, one is commerce and the other is initially the Egyptians had a line of forts that went up that highway. So the Egyptians' idea of having forts is not so that they could hold the land, but that they could prevent enemies from getting past those forts. That make sense?

So did they want the produce that was actually being produced in Israel then and in that particular land? The Egyptians were not interested in taking produce from Israel particularly. The Egyptians basically took land in order to maintain their culture for the pharaoh.

So they would take land so they'd get slaves. And they were otherwise interested in just leave us alone. And their military was not out there to just capture lots and lots of land like the other empires were. They just said, leave us alone. We'll take land as much as is needed to get the slaves that we need. But they weren't interested in just expanding the empire. So they had a different philosophy of empire. Yes, it is mostly a defensive mindset that the Egyptians had once they captured enough so that they could get the slaves that they needed. They had Nubians, which were the black slaves from the south of them, and then they had Asiatics, which is more up towards Israel and others from that area.

Okay, so finally, Finally, the Babylonians were able to defeat the Assyrians, and they were really nasty too. Right? One of the things that the Babylonians were also cruel, and we'll go more into the culture after a bit, the Babylonians were also very cruel. If they were threatening someone, their technique was to completely wipe them out, burn the bodies, burn the family's bodies, and grind them and their house to dust. I don't mean rubble, I mean dust. they would just, you know, any record that you ever lived there would be erased.

The Babylonians, like the Assyrians, were very cruel and the destruction was thorough. So, now, whereas the Assyrians like to scramble people, the Babylonians like to move everybody close to Babylon, so they would strip out all the population out of the outlying areas and move everybody close to Babylon.

So here is the southern kingdom finally falls to Babylon. First they take out some of the noblemen and bring them to Babylon. Here's Daniel, right? This is the book of Daniel. describes that sort of event. Then 586 Nebuchadnezzar came in and completely obliterated Solomon's Temple. And then that's when they brought the Jews back to Babylon, which by the way was not a nice direct trip. It wasn't a let's go straight across here. It was let's go way to the north and then down along the river. So it was a long walk. and a difficult one. Then what happened? Let's look at page one. You've got the divided kingdom, bottom of page one. Alright, so Babylon conquers Judah, 70 years go by, and finally the temple is rebuilt. Was rebuilding the temple a real exciting time? Yeah, it was difficult.

Because the Persians had come in after the Babylonians, the Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, had in its doctrines that you don't take people from their homeland. And so they sent the Jews in a couple of waves back to their homeland in Israel to rebuild the temple and rebuild the walls. The temple and then the walls under Nehemiah. When the temple was rebuilt, those people who were quite old and remembered the first temple cried. And those people who were younger and didn't remember the first temple cheered. All at the same time.

So here was the temple rebuilt. That was the temple that Jesus walked in with one modification to that statement. 20 BC, Herod began major modifications to the temple, major upgrades to the temple. And so the temple was under reconstruction while active all during, for example, the time of Christ and most of the time when the apostles were there. gave permission to rebuild the temple, and it didn't happen for a period of time. And then our exercise gave another treaty of permission for them to go back and build the walls of the city. Is that correct? Cyrus said, you can go back to your land. And of course, that's when the temple rebuilding project began. The wall building wasn't until quite a bit later. But the temple wasn't finished until the walls were finished, right? The walls were finished later, afterwards. After the temple was finished? Yeah. Walls were worked upon later.

Now, one of the things that's very interesting, the book of Haggai says that the glory of this later temple will be greater than that of Solomon's. Why? Why would the glory of the second temple be greater even though it didn't look greater? Christ would walk in it. Now that's not how the Jews interpret that passage. But yes, you're correct.

So now, here they are at the end of the Old Testament period. Malachi is the last of the prophets, and he writes the last Old Testament book, and that's the close of the Old Testament period. They didn't have any more prophets after that time. and didn't add any more books to the Bible. They had other books written later that were considered of historical significance and were important to some groups, but the Bible itself, the Old Testament, as we call it, because they don't like the idea of the New Testament, right? So the Old Testament, that was completed about 430 A.D. You have one here, Chronology of Old Testament Bible Books. Now this goes all the way back to the beginning and then goes to the end of the Old Testament period. So, this is sweeping through all of the Old Testament history.

So you have there from creation to the time Jacob moves to Egypt, you've got the book of Genesis and Job. Job and Abraham lived about the same time. So you have Job and Genesis that are books that cover the same period of time. Then you have the Exodus, the book of Exodus. Then the Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy. Those five books are what are called the five books of Moses. Genesis, as we talked about, was a compilation. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were written, except for the very end of Deuteronomy, written during Moses' lifetime and by Moses. Then you have 1406, Joshua leads Israel into the Promised Land, and so they go first into Jericho and then invade to the south and then to the north.

They were supposed to continue on and they don't. Then we have the period of Judges, Judges and Ruth, which by the way may initially have been one book. You know how we have 1 and 2 Corinthians, excuse me, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Samuel, etc. Those books were initially all in one big scroll, but it got to be unwieldily, so they were broken up into separate scrolls. That's why we have those firsts and seconds on those books. Ruth was very likely attached to Judges, because it was from the same period of time. And then you have the record of 1 Samuel and then jumping down into the rest of the timeline, 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, and 1 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and on to the end there. Then finally 2 Kings.

Under, at the very bottom row there, we have the Old Testament books. We have what are called the pre-exilic, that is before the exile. Prophets. And those are the ones that are listed at the bottom there from Isaiah to Zephaniah. These are the ones before the Jews were sent in to exile to Babylon. Yeah, Stan?

Okay, were these books and stuff written in by a certain group of people like the scribes? That was basically irrespective of the kings? Because it seems like this writing in the books was a consistent, ongoing So there must have been a group of people that were assigned the responsibility of writing these things down, right?

Yeah, think of it, you've got several different categories of authors. For the Old Testament, with possible exception of Job, the Old Testament, they were all Jews, right? So here you have Jews, but Jews of different category and station. Those, for example, who were prophets would write as prophets.

Sometimes they were, let's say, Isaiah was a court prophet. That is, he was a prophet who had a position there right in the court, along with the kings there in Jerusalem. So you'd have court prophets, and then, for example, the book of Daniel, here's Daniel in exile. So here was a book written in exile in Babylon, and then later in Persia, and then brought back to Israel.

In addition to that, you would have those who had the job of scribe, and sometimes that would be a royal scribe, That is, someone hired by the king or other royalty to make note of things. And then later on, in the tradition it has that this was begun by Ezra, you had those who were scribes copying scripture.

So you've got different groups authoring different things. And I would say with the prophets, you could safely say that they wrote their own works. Daniel, for example, wrote his own work. Ezekiel wrote his own work. With Jeremiah, he had a scribe write for him.

And we know his name. And as a matter of fact, two samples of of Baruch that's described, two samples of Baruch's stamp have been found. In other words, stamp documents, seal, two of those have been located. Interestingly, one of them actually has a fingerprint mark on the seal. So, interesting.

Then you see down the line the post-exile, post-exilic prophets, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi. Then what are called the poetic books, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Now, there's something about these dates here that I think is valuable for us to You should have a chart that looks like this, Hebrew Old Testament chronology. Hebrew Old Testament chronology.

Find that? And this is on paper, I don't think it's in the series that you have. Anyway, so Hebrew Old Testament chronology And this shows the continuity of the kings and then the division of the kingdoms. But I think the value I'd like to point out here is that it shows the duration of collection of the books. For instance, look at the very bottom. Many of the Psalms can be identified by time and author. That is, Moses wrote Psalm 90, David, wherever he wrote a psalm, was also named there. But in general, the Psalms was Israel's national hymn book, and they collected it over the centuries. So here's the Psalms, and initially, how many Psalms did you have? One. Here's Moses and he's got one.

So you had Psalms as they were written over time. You had other Psalms added so that you have a total of 150 Psalms. But they weren't all written by the same person and they weren't all written at the same time. Like this shows, over centuries of time, the Psalms were collected. Chronicles is another one, first and second Chronicles, initially written as one scroll but then broken into two. I took it out.

Yeah, and the reason is for a lot of the Psalms, let's say they just continue to collect them as Israel's national hymn book, and some of the Psalms we know when they were written and even at what event precipitated their writing, and others we don't. But they continue to be collected largely throughout the entire time of the writing of the Old Testament. So you have Psalms, which is collected over a longer period of time. Here's Proverbs, which is stretched out over a longer period of time.

Solomon wrote a portion of them. We know very little about the other two authors. Isaiah, written by the prophet Isaiah, for one man, that's quite a lifetime. He spent a lifetime writing an anthology, because some of it is poetic, some of the book of Isaiah is historical. For example, we talked about the account of Sennacherib.

There's even a part of it that is written, well, like some of the Psalms, that are written for children. Some of the Psalms, for example, will go through and have the Hebrew alphabet as the starting point for each of the portions of the Psalm. So you can imagine using this psalm to teach the kids the Hebrew alphabet as they go through, like, there's Aleph, Beth, Gemel. So they would have each of the psalms, the lines, start with letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You know the part from Isaiah, line upon line, precept upon precept?

This is a nursery rhyme. A lot of people will say, oh boy, that's how he studied. No, it's a nursery rhyme. And so that's included. But Isaiah is an anthology. It's a collection over Isaiah's lifetime. And so as you look at it, here's Daniel follows Isaiah, and it's also a collection over his lifetime. It starts when Daniel's very young. and continues on until the very end of Daniel's life. So it's a collection over a lifetime. Imagine, here's the book of Judges. That obviously is a collection over multiple lifetimes.

So you've got quite a variety of literary characters, and then what are some of them that you see that are very narrow on the chart? Not some big long scroll, but all wrapped up. Song of Solomon is one that's right there in the middle, and obviously, you know, from the time of Solomon, and that one is written in a brief period of time. Ecclesiastes and other prophets were written for a brief period of time, not stretched out over a period of time.

So we look at the Old Testament, there is a lot of variety in how they were written, and the circumstances in which they were written, and the purpose for which they were written. Right? Why would God have all this variety? Why not have some sort of uniform way of writing this? Why all the variety?

Okay, yeah, people are different. Pardon? over a period of years. Yeah, so you have changes take place. You have different empires and different people in power. That's going to change the character of things. Some of what was written was written to record what took place because history matters. Other things were not intended to record anything but to convey wisdom. The Psalms were intended to be sung, right? So you have different purposes for different parts, and that's one of the reasons for the different variety, right? Written in different environments.

Do we have any kind of record showing how many people lived during these periods? How many people lived during these periods? What do you mean by that? Well, in this area here, with Israel, I've seen some population charts, but more like world population.

What happens is you look at scripture, there are various times where they have counts of people, and for example, numbers is based on the number of people, right? There's the book of numbers based on, here are the number of people that we have and the various tribes and whatnot. There were other times where they would number the people. And then the groups that went back from Persia back to Israel, we have numbers of those.

In approximate figures, by New Testament times, Two-thirds of the Jews lived outside of Israel. Two-thirds lived outside of Israel, and most of those in three main areas, although they were scattered everywhere, and most of them in three main areas. One is Alexandria, and we'll talk about why that was, and another one, and we'll talk about why this was, was around Ephesus, and another concentration over in Babylon, those who didn't come back. So you have three main areas and then they would scatter from there. Population wise, what we have is largely at certain points, we've got some samplings. Here are the numbers. But obviously they didn't go around as we do and do a census every 10 years or something. I would say it's not necessarily a steady pattern.

Yeah. Other questions? Thoughts? Yes. Yeah, that's a curious one. I've written to this author, Tom Elsrode, to ask him about that. I never could hear back from him. Wrote to him several times, so real busy guy, I guess. So that's a little bit of a question mark. Not sure about that. Yes. Oh, that's a good question. Chapters 1 through 6. Oh, okay, yeah.

He's got timeframes for different parts of it. Yeah, different chapters have different dates. Yeah, different chapters have different dates. And to answer your question, Stan, about when the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt, 443, it's about the time there. Some of these dates are kind of interesting because it depends on the source that you're actually reading.

Yes, and you will find some variation, hopefully not wild, but some variation in the dates. And you can imagine, you know, because it would be things like, you know, so-and-so lived so many years and they died or something. Well, did they live exactly that or was it most of another year on top of that or part of another year? And so sometimes we don't have something exact to work from. And so that's one reason you'll find, you know, different dates varying by a year or two for the same event. Also because these are compiled from different sources, you'll find different dates. In some instances, the dates are set to something that we can mark astronomically. or in some way fix the date pretty well. In other cases, it's arrived at through a fairly lengthy process with a set of assumptions. And that's where you're more likely to see the difference.

722, for example, it says that's when Assyria overtakes Israel and their captivity of the northern nation begins. I don't see too much variation on that 722 date, however, it took them about 15 years to get everybody moved. So even though it gives a specific date, the reality is that's the beginning date. They continued to move them over that 15 year period.

Okay, the next part we're going to go through is the time between the Old and New Testaments. This is fascinating. Gary? I'm trying to find it here. It's right above the end of Kings. That's Lamentations. Yeah, Lamentations. The Lamentations of Jeremiah.

Which, by the way, probably was attached to the same scroll initially, Jeremiah having written both of those. So that would be one where the books are shown separately and they're probably originally written together and put together in the same scroll.

Anyway, next time we'll be going through the time between the Testaments, which is really important. The Bible doesn't record that, but the impacts of that period of time, about four centuries, on what takes place in the New Testament is huge. Here's the New Testament, and it's written in Greek. Why would that be? Well, that's explained by what happened between the Old and New Testaments, right? So you've got that. Also you've got this group, the Romans, how they show up.

You have some changes of terminology. because the Jews had changed some of their traditions and given terminology. The Old Testament doesn't talk about the Kingdom of God. It does talk about the Kingdom of God in terms of what it means, but it doesn't use the term. So what had happened during that period of time is the Kingdom of God, as a term, had developed. And among the Jews, because they were reluctant to use the name of God in vain, by chance, so they would use the word heaven instead.

So that developed. So you had all those developments over that period of time. Anyway, we'll be taking a look at what were the changes, how did they come about, and why are things in the New Testament so different? But we'll also find out that the previous empires all had an impact on the New Testament.

All of them. Remember the thief on the cross? Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you'll be with me in paradise. Persian word. So they've gotten that from the Persians. The Aramaic language has continued throughout the centuries from the originally the Assyrians and it was spoken into New Testament times. So you'll have lots of impacts and we'll see the connection there. Really neat. We better pray or people are going to go blasting through the doors here.

Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you are the God in charge of history. And though it is confusing at times to us, even as we look towards historic moments in our own times, and this being an election year and all that, but we thank you that you are summing up all things in Christ and are managing history to that end. And we give you thanks for all that you've revealed and shown to us because you love us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.