Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

We've been going through kind of the introduction to church history here, and what we started last week was how we got the Bible. I've kind of looked at things and sort of rescheduled what appears when. Today we're going to be going through books that didn't make it into the New Testament and why, and then the copying. So there are a couple of different subjects on how we got the Bible that we're going to kind of focus in on over these next couple of weeks here. And to do that, we're going to start with, in looking at church history here, this is a slide that we showed last week, and what I'm going to do is review some of the slides we looked at last week, just from the standpoint of having things fresh in our mind about which books were included and which ones were not, and why. So the four points we have here about revelation from God to us is inspiration, all the books that were inspired by God, canonization, which is what we'll be specializing in today and focusing on, the transmission, that's what we'll be looking at next week in terms of the copying, and then finally the translation work.

In the apostolic era, the Old Testament had a fixed canon by the apostolic age. Remember, it was Malachi, which is the last book, was also the last book written. And the Jews just figured that was the last of the prophets. So that was the end of the Old Testament canon. And so the books that we now have as the Old Testament, the Jews figured that's the Bible to them, right?

And Jesus' words had authority of the outset because, of course, of who he was. And so whatever Jesus said and whatever was considered valid, from those times was given particular attention. The Apostles functioned as a living canon. That is, as long as the Apostles were there, the books they wrote, the things they said, those were all things that were valued and recognized in the Church. There was the Apostles' activities related to the canon. The selecting and verifying of contents.

One of the things about the Apostle John, and John 20.30 says it, one of the things about the Apostle John is that in his major writings he told why he was writing. The Gospel of John, he said, these things are written that you might believe and that believing you might have life through his name. And in the book of Revelation, he told about why he was writing. So that was a pattern established early on.

The public reading of scripture. And with that one, we have several references. The one in Revelation was actually a promise of blessing for those who read and heard the book of Revelation. There was a circulation of Scripture. I have this one written here. Send it here. These people send this one over here.

And then the determination of what was in the canon and what was not. All Scripture is inspired, but what Scripture? What Scripture and what isn't? One of the things that we find is that if we look through the letters of the New Testament, the apostles often wrote correcting doctrinal error. What's the doctrinal error, for example, corrected in the book of Galatians?

The law. People were coming in, boy, you've got to follow the Mosaic law. And so the book is substantially focused on correcting that error. The truth is, much of the New Testament is of that nature. Correcting doctrinal error. And then finally, the quoting of New Testament scripture.

1 Timothy 5.18 actually quotes from the Gospel of Luke. So we have that quoting pattern. One of the things we pointed out last week is the various writings in the early church. If you didn't have any copies of the New Testament, in handwritten form, all but less than a dozen verses could be drawn from what other people quoted of the New Testament.

There were events which confirmed or required a New Testament canon. One of them we brought out last week is the second bullet. Marcion had his own canon, about 10 books, and what he wanted to do, he didn't like the Jews. So he doctored up the books and selected the ones that allowed him to be anti-Semitic. So that required people to say, hey, wait a minute, this isn't right. What is right? What are the books that ought to be included? And what should they say?

Then, let's see, we had this chart the second week in the church history that listed the New Testament books when they were written and by whom they were written. We had Valentinus indicated wide use of the New Testament books in the church. That's 140 AD, 45 years roughly after John had written Revelation. Marcion, that's the one we mentioned there, Montanus, added to and contradicted what was in the New Testament. And so others recognized, no, this isn't right. So then it brings up the question, what is right? Ah, here's another one that we pointed out, second bullet.

In the Roman Empire, there were 10 waves of persecution, and the last one It was illegal to have Scripture, and having Scripture brought the death penalty. So the question is, what Scripture? What are you willing to die for? You can imagine, we've got Bibles here sitting in the pew racks. You can imagine, what if it was illegal to have those? Would you die for some little book that we had in the pew racks that wasn't Scripture? That was the question that they had. Would I die for something that's not scripture?

So it brought up the question of what's scripture and what isn't. Then we mentioned that there were church councils that were several in sequence. They agreed as to what was scripture and what was not. Now, these are the four criteria that were used to determine what was a book that ought to be in Scripture and what was not. What was canon and what was not. Apostolicity, that is, did an apostle or an associate of an apostle write this?

We went through several of the New Testament books, for example, Matthew. Was he an apostle? Matthew was an apostle. He was the one who Jesus called. Mark was not an apostle. However, he was associated with both Paul and Peter. Luke? Who was Luke associated with? The apostle Paul. Correct. And, matter of fact, the end of Acts, Dr. Luke writes, you know, we and us. So he's right there with Paul. Paul quotes from the Gospel of Luke in 1 Timothy. So we have that association. So either an apostle or an associate of the apostles wrote the New Testament books.

The next one is spirituality. Is this book just about some accounting issues or coordinating something, logistics? Or does this really have spiritual content that is of value and substance? Universality. Was the book universally received in the church or was it just spotty? You know, a couple of them use it and the rest of them don't. And then finally, the third one was inspiration. Does the book give evidence of being divinely inspired? That's what, you know, Paul wrote to Timothy, you know, all scripture is inspired by God.

So those are criteria that were used. and why the canon is closed. Why not have a Book of Mormon and the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ and Science and Key to the Scriptures and a bunch of other books? Why not just keep adding to them? Yeah, in other words, the apostles, the apostolic requirement there, the first one that we had in the list, when the apostles were all gone, the authorization for scripture was gone, right? So that's one, that's right. Any other reason why not? Because they're not inspired. Pardon? Yeah, they're not inspired. As we look at them, they have various claims, but they lack inspiration.

So, when it says evidence, what did they look for as evidence? How did they find it? What do you mean? Evidence? Oh, evidence of being divinely inspired. One of the things is looking at does this fit in with the rest of the books? Let's pick an example.

Suppose you had a book and it said that Jesus was just a man. Is there a problem with that? Because a whole bunch of the books say Jesus is more than just a man, that he is in fact deity. So if we have a book that says otherwise, that's a problem. It should be a book that provides spiritual insight and is consistent with the rest of scripture. Does that, in some degree, answer your question? It should be a book that is consistent with the rest of what is clearly inspired. It should be a book that provides spiritual insight and is not just superficial or teaching something that is obviously off track from what the apostles would have helped to. Okay, so with that, Let's look to the second page here. Now, what we wanted to look at here is there are a number of books.

The Gospel of Thomas is one that you'll probably hear fairly often. There are a number of books that were written that look on the surface to have some kind of a, boy, I wonder if that's inspired, or I wonder if that's one of the books of Scripture. Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Barnabas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of the Egyptians, Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of Philip, Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul, Acts of Andrew, and on and on. What we have here is a rough rule of thumb.

By 800 AD, there were about 800 fake New Testament books. Lots of them. People kept inventing more and more of them. gospel of this guy and gospel of that one, and so a number of the other apocalypse documents, and many more. There were four categories of books.

The homologoumena were the accepted books, 20 books of the New Testament about which there was never any question. And we'll take a look at what those were. The next one down, antilegumena, there were seven that were initially questioned by or disputed by some. Hebrews, James, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, Jude and Revelation were questioned by some. in the early church. There was what's called the New Testament Apocrypha, and we'll go into what each one of these includes here.

These are respected books but not in the New Testament. The Didache was one, the Didache means the teaching, was one that was respected but just not included. What would be some books that we have today that are respected books but people recognize that's not scripture? Can you think of something? Books that Christians generally regard and respect, but everybody knows it's not Scripture.

Some systematic theology, like we've studied major Bible themes, for example. There's one we've studied a few different times. It's a respected book, but we don't say it's Scripture. Yeah, Tom? Yeah, quotes by Billy Grant, you know, there are books that are generally regarded as this is a helpful book or this is worthwhile, but nobody goes and pretends that it's scripture.

That would be in this category. Then the fourth one is the pseudepigrapha, books rejected by all, or nearly so, pretending to be valid New Testament books, and we'll be looking at several of those this morning. So now, We have there, of course, the What Qualifies as Canon is a big issue, but the next one is the Homo Lugumina. These are the 20 accepted books.

There was really never any question at the early church as to whether these were accepted in biblical books, and that's Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, basically on through the letters of Paul and then 1st Peter and 1st John. Those were never disputed. Those were accepted at the outset as, yeah, these are valid New Testament books. Nobody significantly had any question about these, except for some that everybody regarded as heretics. The next one, the Antilagumena, these were the seven initially somewhat disputed New Testament books. Hebrews, why would there be a question about Hebrews?

Yeah, who was the author? We talked last week, I think there is evidence, it's not conclusive. There's evidence to point to Barnabas as being a possible author. Can I say definitely it's him? Nope. But that was the point in question for Hebrews. Who's really the author of this book?

You had also James, and interestingly enough, I mean that would have been a half-brother of Jesus, and Jude as well, both half-brothers of Jesus. Some question, you know, is this a fake book, initially some question, then later on that was resolved. Second Peter, not First Peter, but Second Peter was questioned in some degree. Second and Third John, shorter letters. And then finally, of course, we mentioned Jude, but also Revelation.

Revelation is an interesting case in that What had happened in the early church, initially, the church all believed in a literal 1,000 year millennium. Millennial kingdom, that was what the church accepted. One of the early church authors and speakers said, anybody who doesn't believe that's a heretic. But what began to happen as the church began, instead of looking at scripture, but starting to adopt more traditions, what began to happen is that they looked at the Old Testament descriptions of the Millennial Kingdom and they thought, that's too much joy.

That's too good. And because you had this idea of asceticism, kind of like the monks and depriving yourself of this and that was somehow considered holy. And so that was why the book of Revelation with a literal 1,000 year millennium was questioned. They thought, well, that kingdom is just too good. And then that's not good because we all have to go around depriving ourselves. and that that's holiness. So that was why the book of Revelation was questioned. Isn't that interesting?

Eventually those seven books were accepted. Now we have the New Testament Apocrypha, and one of the examples that's fairly early is the Didache, which means the teachings. It was a sort of a church manual. It was regarded highly, but it wasn't considered scripture.

And we have that kind of thing today. We give the example of major Bible themes or other significant writings that people say, well, those are worthwhile writings. They're not scripture, but they're good to read. And you may find from time to time somebody recommends this book or that book, and that's fine. They're not scripture.

And then finally the pseudepigrapha, the books rejected by all or nearly so and pretending to be valid New Testament books. What happened is over time more and more and more of those books began to be generated and they are still being generated in our day. One of the books that used to be, you could find it in print, it was written about a century ago, is the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that was another one, fake New Testament, you know, kind of book that told about Jesus going into India and, you know, adopting Hinduism and Buddhism and things like that. completely bogus, but an example of some of the fake New Testament books that are still being generated. The fake apostolic books started early.

Here is a quote from 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 and 2. Paul wrote this, Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, that our gathering together with him and are gathering together with him that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us." So somebody had apparently already cooked up a fake letter from Paul. A letter as if from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Already come. And guess what? There are those who are teaching that the Lord has already come. The term for that is preterism. So that fake New Testament letter had already begun before the New Testament was completed. They'd already started it.

The Gospel of Thomas. I'll be interested to get your reaction. Oh, this is one on page four, a really good chart. We won't go into detail because it will spend weeks and weeks and weeks going through the detail. But this gives, in sequence, individuals, canons, translations, and counsels regarding the New Testament books. So anyway, I'll let you study that on your own. I think it's a helpful chart. But let's see.

We'll go on to this. The Gospel of Thomas. This book was written about 140 AD. So John, the last living apostle, had been dead for several decades when this one was written. Thomas had long since died. Thomas, from any record we have, went to India and died in India. So this was written many decades after the death of Thomas. It wasn't written by Thomas. It was not accepted by a number of early church authors and writers. There were two versions of this book in circulation, one of which was more Gnostic, that is, the idea of Gnostic is having special revelation in character.

The Gospel of Thomas tells about Jesus at age five making clay at a brook, then turning the clay into live sparrows. Going to buy that? It gets worse. It also tells of Jesus making a young boy wither like a tree and making another boy fall dead for bumping into his shoulder. Does that sound like Jesus? Not so much, right? So it has various sorts of fanciful tales. It tells a different character of Jesus. A boy bumping into a shoulder, you think he's going to kill him?

I think not. That does not fit the character of Christ that we read in the rest of scripture from the books that are accepted. So by several different counts, the Gospel of Thomas is bogus. But you get on PBS or some of those programs and they will promote them as somehow lost books or something. Well, it never should have been included. Another one, the Gospel of Peter. We have only fragments of this one. This work was believed to have been written about 100 to 130, and Peter died before the year 70. So Peter had been dead for decades, right? When the Gospel of Peter was written.

And it was referenced by Origen, Eusebius, and Theodoret. It teaches that Pilate was guiltless for the death of Christ, the Jews deserving all of the blame. So it was anti-Semitic, right? That Jesus felt no pain when crucified. Did Jesus feel no pain when crucified?

No. That was not the case. and that Jesus' brothers and sisters were from Joseph's first marriage. Why would that be important to somebody? Yeah, in other words, for somebody who said Mary was ever virgin, they would want to make sure that that was put in there. But there's no evidence of that at all. The Gospels say that Joseph had no relations with Mary until after Jesus was born, which means he did after Jesus was born, right? And then would have had other children. And that's the record we have.

The Apocalypse of Peter. It was written about 150 AD, more than 80 years after Peter's death. This work goes into extensive, grotesque detail in describing the specific agonies of those in hell. Dante's Inferno is influenced by this work, which reflects that this work continued to have influence long after it was rejected as true scripture by the church at large.

Let's take a look here. I think we've got, yes, here we go. You'll find on page five, the apocalypse of Peter. Page five and six. I'll read at least a portion of it. Many of them will be false prophets and will teach diverse ways and doctrines of perdition, but these will become sons of perdition.

And then God will come into my faithful ones who hunger and thirst and are afflicted and purify their souls in this life, and he will judge the sons of lawlessness. And furthermore, the Lord said, Let us go into the mountain and let us pray. And going with him, we the twelve disciples, begged that he would show us one of our brethren, the righteous ones, are gone forth out of the world, in order that we might see of what manner of form they are, and having taken courage, might also encourage the men who hear us. And as we prayed, suddenly there appeared two men standing before the Lord towards the east, on whom we were not able to look.

For there came forth from their countenance a ray as of the sun, and their raiment was shining such as the eye of man never saw. For no mouth is able to express or heart to conceive the glory of which they were endued, and the beauty of their appearance. And as we looked upon them we were astounded, for their bodies were whiter than any snow, and ruddier than any rose, and the red thereof was mingled with the white, and I am utterly unable to express their beauty."

Are you impressed so far? Not so much, okay. For their hair was curly and bright and seemed both on their face and their shoulders as if it were a wreath woven of spikenard and diverse colored flowers, or like a rainbow in the sky, such was their seemliness. Seeing, therefore, their beauty, we became astounded at them, since they appeared suddenly.

And I approached the Lord and said, Who are these? He said to me, These are your brethren, the righteous, whose forms you desired to see. And I said to him, where are all the righteous ones, and what is the eon in which they are and have this glory? And the Lord showed me a very great country out of this world, exceeding bright with light in the air, where lighted with the rays of the sun, and the earth itself blooming with unfading flowers and full of spices and plants, fair-flowered and incorruptible, and bearing blessed fruit, and on and on.

Now, the reverse side of that. In verse 20, And over against that place I saw another squalid, and it was the place of punishment. And those who were punished there and the punishing angels had their raiment dark like the air of the place. And there were certain there hanging by their tongue. And these were the blasphemers of the way of the righteousness. Under them lay fire, burning and punishing them. And there was a great lake full of flaming mire in which certain men that pervert righteousness, tormenting angels, afflicted them. And there were also others, women, hanging by their hair over the mire that bubbled up." Are you impressed yet? Does this sound like an inspired book?

One of the things that I've noticed is that scripture does not go into great detail about hell. And one of the things you'll find about this and some other books that are not biblical is great detail about hell. And some of it almost to the point where it's like, you're kidding me, you know? I mean, this is bizarre. Great attention to that is what you see here, and it just goes on and on like that. This sin, they get this, and this sin, they get this. It all gets to be very strange.

So, then we have after that the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and you have a copy of that on page 7, the last of the pages. How that came about is Paul wrote to the Colossians and said, you know, have this book written that I've written, you know, distributed to the other churches in Laodicea and in Herapolis and have the letter that I wrote to them at Laodicea distributed elsewhere. So it refers to a letter written to the Laodiceans. So what happened? Somebody later on, long after Paul was dead, wrote this epistle to the Laodiceans. this so-called missing epistle. What you'll find is it has words similar to what Paul would write pulled from other books that he wrote. It says this, Paul an apostle not of men and not through men but through Jesus Christ to the brethren who are in Laodicea.

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank Christ in all my prayer that you are steadfast in him and persevering in his works in expectation of the promise for the day of judgment. And may you not be deceived by the vain talk of some people who tell you tales that they may lead you away from the truth of the gospel which is proclaimed by me. And how may God grant that those who come from me for the furtherance of the truth of the gospel and then there's a break there in the text. may be able to serve and to do good works for the well-being of eternal life. And now my bonds are manifest, which I suffer in Christ, on account of which I am glad and rejoice." And it goes on like that.

It's basically words drawn from other things that he wrote, compiled to make up a letter to the Laodiceans. But it was not written by Paul, most assuredly. Yes. Yes, like a cheat sheet. All the words you look at, you say that sounds like Paul. However, it was written a couple centuries after Paul was dead. It was concocted from other things that Paul wrote. So this was rejected.

And so you get an example, yes? Yeah, in other words, what would happen is people would come up with these things and it would be a lost letter that was found. It would be a, you know, here's another apostle that wrote a gospel. They would have names given to these things that made them sound valid and they would try to pass them off as valid New Testament books. It's just as you go through it, you find that first of all, all of them were written after the apostles were all dead.

So that was part one. And people look at it and say, hey, that's a fake. Are there many of those books available today? Oh yeah, just like this. What I'm giving you is a sampling. Many of these books you can get copies of. in some form or another, just like this. And so I've given you a sample so you have an idea of what they're like, but it's like with the Gospel of Thomas.

Here's Jesus killing a boy because he bumped into his shoulder. That does not sound like Jesus at all, right? Here he's telling you to forgive, but then he kills a boy for bumping into his shoulder. In Catholicism's Bible, the man pleads the apocrypha, and there's even 3rd Corinthians.

No, they include the books that we include, plus the Apocrypha. And by the way, their Apocrypha is different from the Apocrypha that's accepted among the Orthodox churches. And we'll go into why that's the case. No, no. Now, having said that, some of the Catholic writers were influenced by these. For example, we mentioned that Apocalypse of Peter, That influenced the more well-known writing, Dante's Inferno. All the description of those who commit this sin get this punishment, and those who commit this one get this other punishment. The Apocalypse of Peter was inspiring to Dante as he wrote Dante's Inferno. There's also a famous painting Yeah, and that's the thing.

People would read books like that. It was never officially adopted as this is scripture, but nonetheless people were influenced. Another thing I think you have to figure is that while what were the official books was accepted at these church councils, The direction more and more was to deny people access to scripture. It became capital punishment to have a copy of the scriptures that wasn't officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church. And so actually having scripture and knowing what's in it and knowing what's not in many places became a real confusing point. Yeah, this is officially accepted as scripture, but nobody can read it.

So, then we have the Protevangelium of James. This is, again, a book written. James died in about the early 60s AD. Josephus records his death. So this was written in the second century, many decades after James was dead. The details of Mary's birth, infancy, and life, including that she was perpetually a virgin, again that reinforcing a thought that came on later, being born after only six months in the womb, not nine months, and also walked seven steps or six months of age.

Okay. So the balance of the book tells a rather fanciful account of Jesus' birth mixed with some material taken directly from Matthew's and Luke's account, followed by a description of the death of Zechariah in which his spilled blood turns to stone. Oh boy.

So what you have here is, as we look at this, and I've given you some sampling, Lots of things where people took valid New Testament writings and then concocted something, pushing certain doctrines and beliefs. A fairly common one was that Mary was ever virgin and she had some magical station and that sort of thing. And that started in the second century and on, so fairly early.

As you go through these, and obviously I've only given you a few samples, but that's, I think, indicative. As you go through these, these were all written later, after the Apostles. They either had very obvious apostolic borrowings, like that letter to the Laodiceans, or else had content that you say, well, this is craziness. How does this help me? to know that this person who committed blasphemy gets punished this way and this person who committed murder gets punished this way, etc. You pretty quickly get the idea that, okay, I get the picture. These are 27 New Testament books that we have in the Bible, and those are the ones that are indeed written by or written by someone directly associated with the Apostles. And they are inspired by God and have good spiritual content.

Yes? Well, actually, it seems like what they were trying to do was to motivate people well-educated by fear. And when you think about that, that's the direct opposite of faith. Isn't that something? Yes. That's a good point. This apocalypse of Peter describes all this horrific stuff. And is that really the direction that God's Word actually goes? Yeah.

Isn't that also the direction and the avenue that the Catholic Church took because they were reading this stuff and believing it. So in a sense, they probably had a good reason for doing it, but it ended up being like so many times when you have control and power, it becomes absolute. So they were probably motivated well in the beginning to focus the religion for the people, but then it got all blown up out of proportion because of the power that came from it.

Not having a focus on scripture and having scripture so that it's not in everyone's hands meant that traditions ended up taking a prominent role. One of the things, you know, scripture never talks about, for example, baptizing infants. Scripture doesn't ever talk about that. But what happened is around 220, okay, so this is over a century after John had died, 220 AD was about the time that both the Lord's Table and baptism were looked at as being spiritually effective.

That is, they do something spiritually, they're not just picturing something. So starting those years, the Church began to embrace those as doing something, as accomplishing something, and then from there more and more traditions developed as to what that meant. Oh, this becomes the body and blood of Christ. We baptize you and that somehow saves you and therefore we've got to do that to the infants.

So by the early 400s AD, it became capital punishment for parents not to baptize their infants. So that was less than two centuries later. It went from, you know, we recognize baptism as being effective, to now it's capital punishment for the parents. So in other words, if parents objected to having their infants baptized, they would kill the parents and then baptize the children anyway, because of course that's how they were saved. And that continued on, and in fact, the Calvinists and the Lutherans continued killing those who refused infant baptism. During the Reformation period between the Catholic Church, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists, about 4,000 to 5,000 of those who objected to baptizing their infants were killed. So this belief in baptism being effective was well entrenched and it wasn't something that immediately was gotten rid of just because there was a reformation.

But those are the kinds of writings that got entrenched in the church in the centuries following. where they started drawing from them, because there was confusion about what's scripture and what isn't, and having scripture easily available so that people recognized, oh, this is scripture and that's not.

It's only by reading scripture regularly and openly and having it freely available that people were able to discern, this is scripture, that's not scripture. Just like we tell about the Gospel of Thomas, we think about Jesus makes a boy wither, Jesus kills a boy because he bumps into a shoulder. You and I can look at that and say, that doesn't sound like Jesus to me. But if you were in a situation where you didn't have access to the Bible and could become aware and knowledgeable about what is Jesus' character, then you might be misled by these.

So that's why by the, again, round figures, by about the year 800, there were about 800 fake New Testament books. Hundreds of them, a great many of them. We obviously have only touched on just a couple of them, giving you examples, but what you see here in the examples is typical. All sorts of fake New Testament books still being written. And people still going around talking about things like the Gospel of Thomas as some sort of a lost gospel. Rubbish. Jesus does not kill little boys for bumping into a shoulder. There is no evidence that that's ever consistent with his character.

Other questions? Comments? Yeah? To me, I think it's interesting because when Jesus went into the wilderness, obviously, which we all know, I think it's Matthew 4, and he always went back that it is written, or it's God's Word, or the validity of Scripture, or what's written.

And here, I think Satan is adding all this stuff, like Gnosticism, and about Mary, and all these other things, just to, I guess you could almost say pollute, but it's to dilute the Word of God. So creating confusion and chaos out of God's order, which is written down. It's amazing to me that they were able to sort through all this stuff and come up with this valid book. This is inspired, and the rest of it is not.

And think of it, even in the last couple of centuries, people have come up with other books that they say, oh, these are also valid books, you know, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. And then you got, you know, Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, lists all of her last names, you know, writing Science and Key to the Scriptures for, you know, the Christian Science Church. And then you've got, you know, Ellen G. White with her all her writings. So all these other books, even in more recent times, have been brought forward.

I mentioned the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ about a century ago. People still come up with other books that they say are inspired, and they keep coming up with them. It's an interesting pattern. But what was inspired was actually established quite some time ago. And as you compare them side by side, it does become clear. This is inspired by God. This is valuable and rich truth.

And this other thing over here is nonsense and garbage. Other thoughts, questions? Next week we'll go to the copying of the New Testament and look at that. There are thousands of handwritten copies of the New Testament. The copying of the Old Testament was rather an entirely different tradition, which the Jews actually carried on, and we'll look briefly at that, but mostly the New Testament is what we'll be looking at. It is miraculous that we have the number of copies that we do, well over 20,000 handwritten copies of all or a portion of the New Testament. Over 5,000 in Greek and over 20,000 by the time you include other languages that it was translated into.

So we'll take a look at the copying you know, how do we have what we have and even looking at things like Ever noticed at the end of Mark some of the modern Bibles will say well This is not all that reliable or the account of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery You'll see a lot of the modern Bibles. I have some little note questioning that so we'll take a look at that as well I think you'll find that interesting and valuable So anyway, let's pray Lord, we thank you for what you have retained, what you inspired, and even amazingly what's now so commonly available. And we thank you that we can trust it. We thank you that we can look at what you have brought forward for our benefit. And we thank you that you did it because you love us and care for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.