 Okay. Good morning, everyone, once again. Thank you for connecting to this class, BC212, on Christian apologetics. Let's take a moment to pray and we'll get started. Could anybody lead us in prayer as we get ready to start, please? Somebody could go ahead, Jafina, please. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this beautiful day and for the beautiful class here above the house. God, we praise you, dear, and each and every one of my classmates and chieftains, especially our teachers, help us to open our heart and mind and listen to it and take it in our life forever. Jesus, not just listening to it, but applying it in our life. Help us to understand the deepest mysteries of the Lord. Be with us and guide us, fill us with your knowledge and wisdom. We love you and we praise you in the system of prayer. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Okay. So last week, we were talking about the Bible. The Bible has a book, how God inspired it and practically how the Bible has come to us today. So I'm going to just quickly review what we did last week and then we're going to move forward. I would encourage all of us to read the lecture notes. I've tried to condense useful information for us. So I would encourage you to read the notes in the class. I'm speaking and I'm just summarizing or maybe giving in brief the material that's there. But if you read it, you will get more information. So I'd encourage you to do that. So let's quickly review what we did last week and then we move forward to continue our discussion, our learning about the Bible. So we wanted to answer some questions for ourselves. How do we know that the text of the Bible is accurate? How did the Bible get canonized? That means how were the 66 books in the Bible selected and why were they selected? So we wanted to understand that. And today, so we will finish that part today. And then we will then move into answering the third question, which is, you know, there are so many different English versions of the English Bible. How are these versions or translations done? And how do we select which one to use and so on? So we will be doing some of that today. Now, we said that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It is something we know from a scriptural basis that God's Word is inspired. It is what God spoke, but he spoke it through human, human people, ordinary people. And so there is this practical side, the way the Bible was put together over many years, over a period of at least 1000 years. So we went through some of that information. We talked about the Old Testament, mostly written in Hebrew. Some parts of it written in Aramaic and the New Testament. All of it was written in Greek with around the first century A.D. And totally from Genesis, we go from Genesis to Revelation. We're saying the Bible covers 1500 years, 66 books, 13 and the Old, 27 of the New, 40 different authors. So we covered all of that. And then we said, you know, so practically it was written on papyrus and then on leather scrolls subsequently. And then it was put in this codex or which is kind of like a book form. You know, not as nice as the books today, but it was papyrus or animal skin put in that book form. That would be called the codex. But it was copied very meticulously by these scribes. They hand copied it for many hundreds of years. That's how it was done, you know, it was written by hand, but they were very careful in how they copied it. And so we mentioned that, you know, the credentials for ancient text, there are two things. How many manuscripts are there and how close are we, how close are the manuscripts to when it was originally written, the time gap. So these are two criteria that we look at when we when we study the text of ancient literature or manuscripts written long time ago. And so we said, okay, there are so many people historians and so on. So this is, you know, the numbers is what the numbers look like for many of the other texts. Then we kind of got into the details of the Bible itself. So we said Malachi or the Old Testament ended with the book of the prophet Malachi around 400 BC 400 years before Christ. You know, the Old Testament basically what we know as the Old Testament 66 books, sorry, the 39 books came into existence. The books were there. And then there was 400 years of silence, no major prophet. And then of course the New Testament came in. But up until 1947, we had the oldest manuscripts we had were from 980. This was with regards to the Old Testament. So 980 and the time gap from then to 480 is about 1300 years. So that is quite a long time gap. But then what happened was there was a discovery and amazing discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's a certain place here in the Cumbrian caves near the Dead Sea. Saw this picture here. They discovered manuscripts that were kept in jars. And basically they found the entire Old Testament except for the book of Esther. All the other books were there preserved. And then they compared the text. And I just gave one example where when you compare the text and so two things. One is the Dead Sea Scrolls was scrolls that were written around 150 BC. So suddenly we go from 980 to 150 BC. We're getting closer to the time when the oldest book was written. So the time gap suddenly shrinks from 1300 years to 250 years. And then we also said that in actually comparing the text. And we gave the example of the book of Isaiah. As I was written 750 BC. We already had copies from 980. And then you compare it with the copies now that we have found from 150 BC. What we saw was that the text between 980, 150 BC that's almost 1000 years. There were hardly any changes. Just give one example. So it shows how careful these scribes were when they were hand copying the text. Very, very careful. So it really gives us so much confidence that through time hundreds of years over 1000 years. The text has not been, you know, okay, there may be a few minor changes. But essentially the text has not changed. So if we and then of course we, there are the translations from the Hebrew and Aramaic. We've got translations into other languages, the Old Testament, the Greek translation was known as the Septuagint. And we have various copies of the Greek translations. Then we are Latin translation, so many other languages. The New Testament, of course, was written within a short period of time, the first 100 years AD. And so again, we have many manuscripts of those. And so if we summarize, you know, the number of manuscripts, the time gap of the Old and the New Testament, it is amazing. Compared to all the other ancient texts, we've got more number of manuscripts and the time gap is pretty small compared to all the other works. So it is amazing. It's amazing. And if you compare the Bible with other works, we see the Bible is amazing in the way it's been preserved. And in the way the text has maintained its authenticity, authentic text. And then also the content is very, very different when you compare these texts. Some of the other important things we pointed out was that even the Lord Jesus acknowledged the Old Testament. Many scriptures are there. And if people try to point out any problems with the Bible, the text of the Bible, there are two main things that we need to look into. Understand the law of non-contradiction. So we kind of explain that. And also if we look into the background, then things become clearer. Things that are difficult for us to understand will become better as we are easier to understand, clearer in understanding. If we look into the historical cultural background, so we covered that. And then we were in this part talking about the Canon of Scripture on saying, on what basis were these 39 books selected by the Jews, of course, first and then taken on by the church later on, which we explained last time? What was the basis? And then on what basis to the 27 books of the New Testament? How would they select it? And then what we're going to talk today is how would these put together so that we get the 66 books of the Bible? So I summarized a lot of this. You could read through it, but essentially what we said is that for the Old Testament, the Jewish elders, but then a very important was who was speaking? Was it a prophet of God who was speaking? And was there accuracy in what was being said? So it had to come through a prophet of God, through inspiration. So who was speaking? And then is it consistent? Is it accurate? Very important criteria. So they didn't just take anybody's writings. No. Did a prophet of God speak? So that's why Malachi was the last prophet that they recognized and they didn't take anything after that. So even though there were a lot of other writings after that, the last recognized prophet of God was Malachi. And that's why the Old Testament pauses there. And they did not look at taking the other historical writings, which we mentioned about Apocrypha, which is part of the Catholic Bible, but we don't recognize that simply because it was not recognized by the Hebrew scholars, the Jewish elders. The New Testament, similarly, but then did an apostle write it? Was it one of the 12 apostles? Or was it one of the apostles recognized by the church that includes the apostle Paul? Or was it written by somebody who were associated with the apostles? So that was a very important criteria. Now, so time went on. We'll pick up from here. As time went on, so keep in mind, a lot of things were orally communicated. We had the original writings of the prophets and the apostles, which made up the Old and the New Testament. And then there was, you know, a lot of, we didn't have, so the common man didn't have, you know, like us today, everybody has a copy of the Bible, but that was not the case. Not even in the early church, right? A lot of it was oral traditions, things that were passed on. You know, so example, the example. All right, just think about this. Today, when we come to church, we each one of us are carrying a Bible. We have a Bible. We can read it ourselves, but that was not the case for people up, you know, well into the early church. There they came and everything they learned was only what they heard. You know, so they would listen to the teachings. Now, before the church was born, it was in the synagogue. The scriptures would be read, but everything was oral. You only learned through what was spoken. Same thing in the early church. They didn't have a printed Bible. It was all oral. Everything you learned, everything you knew was what you heard spoken by the apostles. Now, there was a time when, and this was, you know, around the first three, four hundred years, slowly they moved away from oral to the writings of the apostles and the Old Testament prophets. Right? So the focus was now on the written scripture. Slowly now, because remember, still now copies are not available. It's not in print largely. We still depending on learning through oral tradition, but then now the focus is shifting to. We have the writings of the apostles. We are making copies of it. We need to know what are the writings we're going to follow. What are the writings are just, you would say, literature. Right? So we need to distinguish or we need to separate that out. So how do we do it? How do we say these writings are what we will call scripture? And the other writings are just literature. How do we do it? So slowly, over time, we're still in the first four hundred years of the church, there were various councils, councils meaning meetings of leaders. So it was not one person who was making this decision, but there were various councils of church leaders who through their discussions and through their conversation discussions, they decided or they began to recognize certain writings as scriptural text. So we have here, I've just listed out these various councils. It's not like you need to know them by heart. But what we need to know is that there were various, you would say, meetings of elders, councils of elders who through their various discussions began to recognize the 27 books of the New Testament. The Old Testament 39 books was already done by the Jewish elders. That was passed on to the church because the church was born out of Judaism. We explained last week. But now the 27 books, that means the writings of the early apostles had to be recognized. These are the writings. Copies were being made, the letters of the gospels or the letters of Paul and the other apostles. It was there. Copies were being made. But now we have to recognize these 27 books and not any other writings. So we had various councils over, especially in the 80, 300, within the first 400 years. And finally, the Council of Hippo and the Council of Cartage, just a short period of time between each other, within a four-year period. They recognized these 27 writings, 27 books as part of the New Testament. The criteria, like we mentioned earlier is it had to be spoken or written by the apostles. Sorry, had to be written by the apostles or by those recognized as the apostles or those were associated with the apostles. Very important criteria. So there they recognized these councils, the Council of Hippo, the Council of Cartage, which was basically the church elders who came together, discussed, decided. And we trust, we believe that God's hand was on these men, these people, as they came together and said, you know, we will recognize these 27 books as canon of scripture. These are the 27 books that meet the standard by which we will say these are the scripture. So that's what it's called canon means they meet a standard. What is a standard? It had to be written by the apostles or those associated with the apostles. We recognize these. That's it. So they put them together with the 39 books of the Old Testament, which was already there. And that became the Holy Bible for us. Or we say the canon of scripture. When you say the canon of scripture, we refer to the whole Bible, 39 books of the Old Testament, 27 books of the New Testament, and they become the canon of scripture. Right. Just a few things and then we will take time for question answers. So, you know, this is just general information. So the term Bible or the Bible here can be traced back to about 223 AD. And the early church father, John Chrysostom, he seems to be the first person or the earliest person we can recognize who began to use this term tabiblia as a writer. And so, somewhere there, you know, within the first 200 years, but in a more formal way, within the first 400 years, this term, the Bible started being used to refer to the scriptures that 39 books and later on, along with the 27, the canon, the whole canon of scripture was referred to as the Bible. So once it was, so that term continued on. And once it was formally recognized by the end of the fourth century, that term remained for these 66 books. Later on, remember, all, you know, up until that time, it was not in chapter and verse, but later on, when the Geneva Bible was published, that is much, much later, 1560. That's when chapter and verse was made or the Bible is put in chapter and verse. And just from the whole point of view was to reference it in preaching and so on. So that happened only in 1560 from the Geneva Bible. So that's just again, general information. So I'm going to pause here. The next part is in talking about Bible translation, which is again something we need to understand. So I'm going to pause here. Let's see if there are any questions and then we will move forward. Any questions? Let me look at the chat. Okay, let's see. Colossians, John Paul, there's a question here. Colossians 416, when this apple is read among you see that it is, it is also the Church of the Lauditians and that you also likewise read the episode from Lauditia. Why is that not important to us? Now, there could have been, as we see here in Colossians 416. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, John. There could have been certain writings which may have been permanently lost. We don't have any access to it. So, for example, we have a reference for that here in Colossians 416, where Paul is saying, look, I have written a letter this episode, which I've written, but I've also written another letter to the Church of Lauditia. I want you to read them. Now, we don't have, so like this, there could be, we don't have access to that episode. So, there could be some apples that have been permanently lost. If, I'm sure, if they, like example, Paul's letter to Colossae, if they had also found his manuscript on his letter to Lauditia, they would have included it. So, if it's lost, then the thing is this. We say, okay, whatever he may have written there is captured. The truth, you know, we see overlapping truths, meaning a lot of what we find in Ephesians is also found in Philippians and Colossians. So, how do we reconcile that? We say, well, it's quite possible that the truth that is, we don't know, we don't know what was written in the letter to Lauditia, but how do we reconcile it? The truth that we find in the Epistles, the Epistles that we do have should sufficiently cover what may have been presented to Lauditia. We don't know, but we're just saying that it should have been sufficiently covered. So, we have what we need, God has made available to us what we need. And so, even if there were certain Epistles written by Paul or any of the other apostles that may have been permanently lost, we believe that what we do have is complete and sufficient for us as the New Testament Church. So, that's how we reconcile that. So, if there are missing letters, then we don't worry. We say, okay, God has put together what we need, and that should be sufficient. Now, I just question, how do we explain the inheritance here, the infallibility of Scripture, even the face of some historical accounts, conflict thing? So, like we said, I'm trying to think, and I can't think right now about any major historical event that is conflicting to what we see in Scripture, but how would we respond to it? I'm just giving us the way to think about it. Like we said, the law of non-contradiction, it's a logical process that we apply. That means an event took place, let's say an event took place, and there are three reports on that event, about that event. Now, in the Scripture, so each of the reports may not cover all the details about that event. They may not cover everything about that event. So, the absence of detail does not imply error. It just means certain parts of the event was emphasized or recorded in three different reports. That means the three different reports are not contradicting each other, just because there is an absence of certain detail. So, the simple example to help us understand it, which we used last week, was suppose I met with two people in the morning at 9 o'clock, I met with two people, just pick their names as James and Paul or something. Suppose I'm meeting with somebody else in the afternoon at 12, and I say, I met with James in the morning at 9 o'clock. Well, it's a true statement because I did meet James at 9 o'clock. Then suppose I meet another person at 3 o'clock, and I said, hey, I met with Paul at 9 o'clock. That's also a true statement because I did meet with Paul at 9 o'clock. Then I meet somebody else later on at 5 o'clock, and I say, hey, I met with James and Paul today. That is also a true statement because I did meet with James and Paul at 9 o'clock. So, all three statements are correct. I did meet with John. I did meet with Paul. I did, what was it, James and Paul? I said, okay. I did meet with James. I did meet with Paul. I did meet with James and Paul. All three statements are correct. They're not contradicting each other, even though there is information missing in the first two statements. So that's just an example to illustrate the law of non-contradiction. That means if there is a record, it's not complete. It's partial. Information is missing. But it's not contradicting. It's not contradicting. Then it's still correct. So that's one way to respond to that. Okay. So, okay, Elisha, we've got a reference here. Let me try to look at it. Second Kings, chapter 8. So Elisha shared two references. Second Kings, chapter 8, verse 25. And Second Chronicles, 22, verse 2. So let me just look it up here. Second Samuel, 8, 25. Second Samuel, 8. Second Samuel, 8. Is that verse 25? I'm not seeing verse 25, Elisha. Maybe it's a... Second Kings, my mistake. My mistake. Second Kings, 8, 25. So, Second Kings, 8, 25. The 12th year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah, the son of Joram, king of Judah, began to reign. Second Kings, 8, 25. Compare that with Second... Let me make a note of this so we can compare it. Let's go compare that with Second Chronicles, 22. Second Chronicles, 22. Ahaziah was 22 years old and became king. He reigned for one year in Jerusalem. So we have a mention in Second Chronicles, 22. Ahaziah, the son of Joram, king of Judah. Okay, so I need to look into this. Okay, so, you know, Elisha, I'm not able to answer your question right now, but let me study these descriptors. I mean, I'm not like Belverston, the history of all the kings, but definitely I have made a note of this. So let me just take some time to look into it and then maybe have an answer for you in next class. I mean, next week, I can study it after today's class and then get back to you on that, okay? I don't know offhand all the lineage of the kings, but I will do that. I'll look into it and I will see how to respond to that. But good, thanks for bringing it up. And we will, I'm sure there's an answer, I'm sure there's a response to it. Okay, any other questions before we move forward? All right. Go ahead, go ahead, John. In the book of Jude, I think verse 14 talks about prophecy by Enoch. And we don't find it anywhere else also. So would it be another book? So, yeah, here's an example where Jude is writing about something which we have no record about. So the big question is, how did Jude know about it? So what we would, I mean, okay, let's, there are two options. Now we can just think through this logically. There are two options. One is either God would have revealed that to Jude because, you know, we don't find any written record of the prophecy by Enoch. Either God would have revealed that to Jude or it could have been recorded somewhere in some other writing where Jude may have read about it. To my knowledge, the second option I think is not there I'm not very sure, but to my knowledge that, you know, because they would have pointed out, okay, Jude would have read it in this kind of writing. But it definitely is not in any of the writings of Moses. So the person who would have most likely recorded it would have been Moses. But it's not there in any of his writings, essentially in the book of Genesis. He just mentions Enoch, he mentions his experience with God and so on. He doesn't record any prophetic word from Enoch. So by a process of elimination, we could say, and I'm saying, again, we can't say with 100% confidence because there's nothing to verify it, but by a process of elimination, we say, okay, it's something God would have revealed to Jude when he was writing this episode. We have no way to verify it because there's no record. So we just say, okay, maybe it was something God revealed to Jude. Do we have a precedent of something like that in Scripture? The answer is yes. I mean, all the five books of Moses are like that. Moses was not around when things happened, but he recorded things for us. Now people will say it could have been oral tradition that was passed down, possible, but more importantly, it was a revelation given to Moses by God when he was on Mount Sinai. Otherwise, he would not have known, for example, how did Moses know, you know, what did, you know, Genesis 224, when Adam said, this is now born of my born, a flesh of my flesh, how did Moses know those words? He wasn't there. It was by divine revelation. So that is a precedent where God is revealing words that were spoken by people to somebody who wasn't even alive at that time. We also have New Testament precedent example. Paul, he's writing to us, you know, and he says, this is what the Lord Jesus said, you know, it's a takee, this is my body given to you. And Paul was in present, present there, when the last supper happened. He had not yet met in this, you know, he, we don't know whether he met and discussed this thing, but he says, Paul says it was given to be by revelation. So basically the details of what happened in that place in the last supper, Paul wasn't present there, but the Lord Jesus revealed to Paul saying, these were the words that were spoken. This is what happened when he, you know, and when the last supper was, when that happened. So we have both all the New Testament examples where, and I'm just quoting two, I'm sure we can find more, where words were revealed to somebody who was not present. There was no other record of it. So that, again, it's not conclusive, but it is, we would say, a most likely way by which Jude understood or Jude knew what Enoch prophesied. Is that okay? Yes, thank you. Any other questions that we could think about? Okay. So let's move on to talk about, you know, Bible translations. How did we end up with so many versions of the Bible and which one is, you know, the one that we need today? Today we have, you know, starting from King James and New King James and NIV, and so many, so many English versions of the translations. Some, you know, and then there are some versions, some Bibles that they base certain scriptures are omitted and so on. And why is all of that? It can be very confusing, right? So let's, so why does that happen? And what, what, what is it? So let's understand how, and we're talking only about English. Okay, I'm not, we're not talking about other languages, but we're talking about English, English versions, English translations. How does it happen? What is the process? Now, in most cases, it's a group of scholars who are working on the translations. In the past, if there were individuals, you know, I think we could think about, you know, early, early, an early church, Jerome's translation, William Tyndale's. So where there were individuals who worked, but subsequently it was, and even today it's, it's groups of scholars who work on these translations. But how do they go about it? So we know there are numerous Greek manuscripts. There are numerous, numerous manuscripts of the New Testament, numerous manuscripts of the Old Testament. And they are also available in several languages for people to look at. These were the early languages into which they were translated. Now, broadly speaking, manuscripts are then segregated or classified into two groups. One grouping of manuscripts is referred to as the majority text, which is where the final reading or the final statement is based on what do the majority of the manuscripts say. So we're going by what the majority of the manuscripts state. So we look at all the manuscripts and it's okay. This verse, this is what the majority say. There is another grouping of manuscripts where we are looking at what does the earliest text say. So we're looking at the date of the manuscript. So we're not looking at the majority, we're looking at the earliest. So usually translators are looking at both these. They're looking at, look, this is what the majority of the text say. This is what the earliest text say. Now, the translators need to make a decision. What are they going to go with? And if there is any discrepancy, I mean, if everything is all aligned, perfect, it's easy. But that's why in certain texts, not all, most of us all agree, but you have certain texts, like we mentioned a few here. These are the common ones, right? Here, and then also in Mark 16. Certain texts, and you will also find not only texts, but you will find in many Bibles. They'll put a note that this word is not found in the majority text. Or this word is not found in the NU, referring to the earliest text. So they would put a note in the Bible. Just give the reader an understanding that, look, this translation is done like this. But this word is not present here or not present here. Okay. So that's just to help us through this, but the translators have to make that decision. That's the first part. But in addition to that, there's an overall translation philosophy, which the translators decide on before they start the work. What is it? So when a group of translators decide, okay, we're going to translate the Bible. We have the original Hebrew and Aramaic. We have the Greek. And then we also have the earliest translations with us. So we know these are the majority texts. This is the neutral texts. This is what it's here. What is the philosophy we're going to follow? So they will decide on that. Okay. Somebody needs to turn off their mic. Okay. Thank you. All right. Now, what are we going to follow? So there is first of all, what is referred to as a formal equivalence. That means it's a word for word translation. So some versions of the Bible, the English Standard Version, the King James Version, the New American Standard Bible, are word for word translations. That's what we call refer to as formal equivalence. So here, the translators said, we're going to do word for word. And then of course, put it into an intelligible English sentence. And then they may add words to make that sentence intelligible. And if they add a word, they italicize it to let the reader know that that particular word is not found in the original Greek or Hebrew text. But the goal of the translators in that situation is word for word. And of course, sometimes one word may have to be explained with two or three words, the equivalent word. But it's an equivalent translation. Then there is functional. So we'll go through this and then we'll understand how the Bible translation. Then there's another way of doing it, which is part for thought. So here the translators are not focused on doing a word for word. Their goal is, hey, let's make it understandable. Let's get the thought across. So it's not a word for word, but I want to get the thought. What was the thought in the original? What was he trying to get across? What was the original thought? Now, in doing so, you know, maybe 90 or 95% may be aligned to the original thought. But there is some amount of interpretation happening because the translators are saying, this is what we think the writer was thinking. So therefore we are communicating that to you. So there is a little distancing in that sense. That means the translation, this is what we think the writer was saying. Then there is, so you'll have the new living translation, NIV, which are functional. Then you have an optimal equivalence. The translators are trying to balance word for word, thought for thought. So we say, okay, we don't want to do too much of interpretation. Let's try to stay with the word for word, but then we will need to do some thought for thought in order to make it understandable. Every translation, the goal is to make it easy for the reader to understand. So the motivation is good. Optimal equivalence would be the, I think it's head CSB, what's it called? Hallman Christian Standard Bible, I think it stands for the full form. Then there is the essential equivalence, which is let's try meaning for meaning. So it's not just thought for thought. You're saying, let's do a little bit of interpreting. What was the meaning of what was originally written? And then we give an equivalent meaning to today's reader. Put it in the language of use today's language and try to put it in today's language to capture the meaning of what was said. So the passion translation would fall into that category. Example, essential equivalence. And then there is paraphrase. Now in paraphrase, the translators are not doing word for word, thought for thought, no. They're saying, let's give a summary of what was said. So it's even more removed from proximity to the original text. The motivation here is let's just make it very easy for the reader. Let's make it more like a story, something that they can just read very easily. So then you have paraphrased versions. So the living Bible, the message Bible would fall more into paraphrase version. So if you look at this little chart, which I think is a very useful way to capture this, it shows us which versions of the Bible are closer to the original in structure and which ones are more of a paraphrased version. So this is a useful chart and we'll come back. We'll take a break. We'll come back and we'll just kind of go through this and we'll explain what would be good for us to work with and so on. So let's pause here. We'll go for a break and we'll come back and pick up here after the break. And also any questions we can take. Thank you. See you in 10 minutes. Thanks.