 Okay, morning, everyone. Welcome to PC212. Just a slight change in how we are doing the class today. I'm teaching from home, these two hours. So those are the on-campus. You're connected online and others as well. Let's bring it get started. I just request somebody to please lead us in prayer and get started. Jesus, we thank you, Lord Father, for this time, Lord Father. Thank you, Lord Father, for gathering us, Lord Father, together, Lord Father, to listen, Lord Father, and to learn, Lord Father, from you, Jesus. Holy Spirit, God, we just invite you into our midst, Lord Father. Be present and we just submit our minds, our hearts, Lord Father, into your hands, Jesus. Holy Spirit, God, you just take control over us, Lord Father. Help us to focus, Lord Father, and Jesus, we pray, Lord, that everything that you're teaching, Lord Father, will be like a seed, Lord Father, that was sown in the good ground, Lord Father, that bays 34, 64, and 100 folds, Lord Father, for your kingdom, say, Jesus. We just submit everything into your hands, Lord Father. We give you glory and honor in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. So last week, we started talking about the authenticity and the accuracy of the scriptures. This is lesson number nine. We went through the first part of it. So I'll just quickly review what we've covered, and then we will finish. I think we should be able to finish the second part of lesson nine. And the second hour today, we should be able to progress into our next lesson, lesson number 10. So let's quickly review some of the things we've covered when we're talking about these scriptures. So this is a question again that many people would ask us about our scriptures. Why do we believe in the Bible, you know, so confidently, so entirely? How do we know it's true? Et cetera. All right. Okay. So I'm just sharing the PDF. Lesson number nine, the Bible is Authenticity and Accuracy. Just to quickly review, we went through some basic questions that we're trying to answer. That is, how do we know the scriptures are real? How are the books put together? You know, why are there these six books and what about other literature that was written around the same time? And why are there some different versions of the English Bible? These are some of the things we would like to understand and have answers for. So we said the Bible, you know, claims for itself that it is the inspired word of God that God breathed into it. God inspired people. And of course it was written by Godly men over a period of almost 1500 years. It was written over a period of time. Godly people wrote it, but they were inspired by God. And we understand most of the scriptures were written, the Old Testament was written in Hebrews and parts of the world in Aramaic, the New Testament in Greek. How was it transmitted through meticulous copying on papyrus and then later on in the codex form, which is on animal skin, very meticulous, so on. And then we did a little comparison of manuscripts, credentials, looking at ancient manuscripts and the number of the manuscripts and the time gap that we have and we compared it to what we have for the scriptures. So we give a little background to the scriptures, how both the number of manuscripts and the time gap is very, very small, especially after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. So in summary, we are saying the Old Testament time gap is just about 250 years and the New Testament is just, you know, 40, 50 years. And we have about 10,000 manuscripts of the Old Testament, 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, in this very small time gap. Basically, these are two criteria or things that we look at to establish the reliability of text that we are reading of ancient scriptures. So we say that, you know, based on this, we could say the Bible is very, very reliable. The number of manuscripts, the time gap, we know that the text we are reading is close to the original. It has not been corrupted or as it was transmitted over many hundreds and thousands of years. So the reliability, the authenticity of the text we are reading is very reliable. We closed in, you know, towards the end of last week, we had a little bit of discussion about the Koran with us. We are not getting into too much detail there. A call is not to argue or not to compare. A call is not to, you know, point fingers or, you know, none of that. A call is just to present. This is what we know about the Bible. Others will have perspectives on their scriptures and it's up to them to compare and make their own decision. You're not here to argue and find. Now, as we move forward, I want to bring our attention to a few other things and also talk about how the scriptures were canonized. That means the, why do we have these 66 books and not other books? So we will spend some time on that. The canonization of scripture, how to get all this come together, the Old Testament and the New Testament. So we'll spend some time on that. And then we will get into talking about the different English versions of the Bible. So we will do that. Now, before we get into it, I just want to point out a few things. One is that the Lord Jesus himself quoted a lot from the Old Testament scriptures. That means from Genesis to Malachi. So let me say Old Testament. We are specifically speaking about the 39 books of the Old Testament and the Lord Jesus in his ministry, in his life in ministry, actually quoted from this, the Old Testament scriptures, which means that by the time Jesus was ministering on the earth, there was an accepted set. As I said, these 39 books, there was an accepted collection of Old Testament scriptures. And of course, we talked about how it came together, but there was this set of Old Testament scriptures, accepted by the Jewish people. And they looked at this as the Holy Scriptures and the Lord Jesus himself quoted from it. And when you study the Gospels and look at how Jesus spoke from the scriptures, he used the Old Testament scriptures a lot. He used it when he was, you know, facing the devil in temptation. He pointed to the scriptures. And you know, many times you would say, you know what the scriptures have said, right? He said, have you another possibly, but not one word of the law in possibly. He spoke about the reliability in his studies of the law, you know, the facts that are presented there. He said, I word is truth. He quoted from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. And when he was, or the Matthew and the book, when he was speaking after his resurrection on the Rotary Nails with two of his disciples or followers, he went through the entirety of the Old Testament scriptures. He went through the Old Scriptures, Old Testament, pointing out the scriptures that were speaking about him. So he journeyed through the scriptures. And these people were listening. Oh, you know, so the Lord Jesus was very well, very familiar with the Old Testament scriptures. And he used that scriptures to point and say, point about him to himself. In fact, he told some of the scribes says, you know, search the scriptures. He's telling them, you search the scripture, which is the collection of 39 books, which they hand. So you search the scriptures because you know that it's life is in it. And he says, but the scriptures are speaking of me. So we're saying that the Old Testament scriptures are actually speaking about him pointing to him. So I want us to understand that the Lord Jesus himself recognized, acknowledged, he quoted from, he referenced, and he even used in his own personal life these 39 books of the Old Testament. So that's very, very significant. Now, sometimes people may question the validity of the text and I'm going to say text. I mean, both Old and New Testament text by pointing out what seem to be errors in the text. And there are different examples of this. Let me say example, and let's look at a few things. For instance, in the Old Testament, we have first and second kings, we have first and second chronicles, which are a historical record, starting right from Genesis on. But kings and chronicles are somewhat parallel. And they are a historical record of what happened in the life of Israel and later on Israel and Judah after they separated as a nation during the time of the kings. And sometimes there seem to be a little variation in how a particular incident is recorded. Or when you come into the New Testament, especially in the Gospels, again, there may be a little variation in how a particular incident is recorded. So people may point to this and say, hey, look, in one case, one of the Gospel writers saying, there's one demon possessed man. In another case, the other Gospel writer about the same incident is saying there were two demon possessed men. So you see there's a contradiction in the Scriptures. So things like that. So how do we respond to such things? And it's very simple, logical response, nothing complicated. We refer to this or technically, in logical thinking, it's the law of non-contradiction. That means, and we can illustrate it like this. Suppose in a given day at nine o'clock, I scheduled a meeting with John, somebody, example, John. Ten o'clock, I scheduled a meeting with somebody else, say Mark. And then at three o'clock, I have a meeting with somebody else, say Paul. And when I meet Paul at three o'clock, if I tell him, hey, I met John today, that's a correct statement. Or if I tell him, hey, I met John and Mark today, there is also a correct statement. So both my statements are true. If I say I met John, that is a correct statement. If I say I met John and Mark, that is also a correct statement. But there is a difference of information in these two statements, but neither of the statements are false. The statements are not contradicting each other. Just that one statement, when I say John, I met John and Mark today, that statement has more information than the statement that says I met John today. Both statements are true, just one has more information, but then it's not a contradiction. So this is logical, it's a simple example. So also in the Gospels, we do find that there will be certain details, whether to look right or somebody else right, which are not found in the other Gospels about the same incident. It doesn't mean this is a contradiction, the scripture text. It just means that the Gospel writer is recording something that he felt was important, that he wanted us to know. It's not a contradiction, it's just that there's a difference in what is recorded. And like this, we understand that you can use many examples in our day-to-day conversations where we say things, only when you need to communicate, whether in written form or spoken form, we use this. And it's not that we're saying something untrue. Both statements are true, it's just that the amount of information that is communicated is different. So that's one response where people find that there's a difference in the stories that are recorded, either in the Old Testament or New Testament, we can explain it that way. Secondly, there's again another thing that people may point to as errors saying, hey, this passage is so difficult to understand. What is it mean? Now, things are difficult for us to understand because we are living in a different context. We are living sometimes about 2,000 years after or sometimes it's in something, if it's the New Testament, it's 2,000 times after. If it is the Old Testament, it's 3, 4, 5,000 years later. So there's a huge time gap. And so there's a difference in our context. And then what may have been very clear and simple to the writer in recording something, to us, this may be very difficult to understand. Throw an example in the book of Job, Job writes about strange things like he says leviathan. So we read, what is that? What is it? We have no context for it, other than look, we know there are big animals, but we don't have an animal called leviathan. Job writes about this. So you need to understand that that doesn't mean it's an error in the text just because we have no such thing as leviathan in our understanding today. But it simply means that there existed certain preachers and we don't know for sure what it is. Which was very big and a big animal, which translated text is referred to as leviathan, but we don't know what it is for sure. But that doesn't mean that it's an error or there's something wrong in the text. It just means we are in a different time frame. And if we are able to get information on either the culture or the history, we will be able to understand that a little better. So that's another important thing for us to present when people say there are errors in the Bible. Look at the story or how could this be? We said, look, we are in a different time frame, but if we can take some time to study the culture or the history, things will become clearer for us and we understand why they said what they said or what they did, what they did. And this can come up in many different scenarios. For example, people ask a lot of preachers, look at how much bloodshed there is in the Old Testament. There's so many wars and fighting, killing, destroying of tribes, destroying of cities. What does all that mean? In those times, that was the way they had to gain territory. That was the way they had to possess land. That's where they had to defend themselves and so on. That was part of the way of life in those times. So it was part of the way they lived or in destroying cities and so on. Or when you come in to the New Testament, say Paul says, he addresses women specifically, how they dress, how they conduct themselves. So Paul retells this whole thing about head covering, so many things like that, where some people can use those passages and say, look, the Bible is putting women down, the Bible is not giving women equal place before God, so on and so forth. But then we say, okay, let's understand the cultural, the historical setting and we can interpret, explain it based on that information, knowledge. So two things to keep in mind when people try to point out errors or contradictions in scripture. One is the way narratives have been recorded for us about incidents. Second is trying to understand the culture and the history and the context and with something that's written will help clear up our understanding. I just wanted to mention these two things. Are there any questions on this before we start talking about the canon of scripture? Any questions on these two things? Okay, you're answering with me so far? Fine, so let's move forward and we want to talk about the canon of scripture which is why are there these 39 plus 27 books that we call as the Bible? How did they all get put together? Who decided? It's going to be these 39 and these 27. Who decided that? How was it, you know, and when did it happen? So we're going to talk about that. So I'll just summarize and how I have collected the information. Of course, I'll just put it in the notes. You can read it in depth. I'll just summarize that for us so we have an idea about the canon of scripture. So the word canon, it just simply means standard or a line that is strong. So this is a line of the standard by which we live and also when we say the canon of scripture, it means two things. It's a standard by which we live but also means these books have made a certain standard because of which they are part of the scriptures and canon is a standard, a rule, a line that's strong. So we know 39 books in the Old Testament, 27 and 27 are the new. Okay, who decided that this was going to be there? These books were going to be in these in the scriptures. What determined them to for them to be there? Now in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible as so very important criteria was for the Jews, not just summarizing, you know, the content that's in the notes, you can read it for the Jews. The Hebrews, very important was these were prophets of God who were speaking, very important and these were recorded as part of their spiritual journey. So the law of Moses, the first five books, the law of Moses, it was given through Moses. Now of course, Moses was not there in the garden of Eden, but it was given to him by revelation and Moses wrote down by revelation, things that God revealed, Moses put that down for for us. So the first five books came through the prophet Moses, that's very important. That means these were scriptures given through prophets, people were inspired by God. And then the second section of the Old Testament scriptures were called the prophets. And they were what we would refer to as the major and the minor prophets. That means they just looking at the influence these prophets had. And these were prophets, men appointed by God who prophesied and the things they prophesied along with the history around which they prophesied, during which time they prophesied was all recorded, starting from Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings and so on and the minor prophets. So these were men who were recognized to be people inspired by God, the words they spoke, the situations, the history around which they were speaking was all recorded. And those books referred to the major and the minor prophets, those books, again, were treated very sacred by the Hebrews. And the last portion of it is just referred to as the rankings, which consists of other 11 books. There are more books, are more of the books that were poetry or wisdom or songs of prayer, prayer and worship, part of their spiritual journey, as well as some of it was part of what happened, that I caught up what happened during the exile and they returned back to the land. So these writings were also sacred, a lot of it were given through prophets like David. Solomon, we won't call him a prophet, but he was definitely a man, anointed by the wisdom of God. So his writings or his sayings. And then, of course, we have Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah. So these were all considered sacred. So essentially, these 39 books over a period of time, they've met certain criteria and they were held as sacred writings by the Jews. The criteria was this was given through the prophets of men who were inspired by God, men upon whom the hand of God works. Now, when I say prophets, we understand that like Solomon or Nehemiah or Ezra may not be necessarily regarded as prophets, but they were men whom God had chosen, whom God was working through or speaking through. And the things they said did and the history around the times in which they lived and served were all recorded. And these scriptures were considered sacred. So there was a certain criteria that went into these scriptures being selected. The underlying thing was these men were people who are inspired by God or who they could recognize and God's hand was upon them. And so those books were considered. Now, obviously, during this time, there were other things being written by other people. Other people were recording history or other people may have written lots of other things. And sometimes even in, for example, in Kings and Chronicles, the Old Testament is actually making mention that, hey, somebody else has recorded something. Right. So it's okay. The life of this king was recorded in this literature in this book. That doesn't make that book sacred. It's just that kings or chronicles is telling us that the things that this king did, apart from what's recorded here, was also recorded by somebody else in writing, recording history. So there is always reference to other material that was being, the other people writing or recording historical events, things going on during those times. The interesting thing is none of those bad literature is available. It's found. Whereas these 39 books have been preserved somehow. And we would say, you know, generally people say, oh, it was just coincidence. You know, I don't think it's coincidence. It was God's hand on these 39 books that these books were preserved, even though there were other people writing other things, you know, during those times, which I actually mentioned here, but none of them survived. None of them were able to last through time. But these 39 books, they were only preserved and they survived through time. So somewhere around 400 BC, and again, this is not known for sure, but Ezra, Ezra the priest, who was there during the exile to Babylon, during the 70-year exile to Babylon, and who was able, and he was very, you know, you can imagine, he was very old at this time, aged at this time. So he was, when he came back, he is credited to as somebody who preserved this collection of 39 books. He's responsible. He's credited that saying, hey, how did these 39 books survive all, you know, the Jews were attacked? Everything, the temple was destroyed, the city was destroyed by the, you know, by different the Syrians and then the Babylonians. And how did these 39 books survive? A lot of other things were lost or destroyed. How did they survive? How were they brought back safely to the Jewish people? And that's where Ezra the priest is given, you know, the credit that he must have had an important role to play because when the people came back and you read about this both in Ezra and Nehemiah, Ezra, you know, he's the one in reading and bringing out the sculptures for the people. And so Ezra the priest, God must have used him to preserve these 39 books safely, you know, while there was all these things happening, invasions and attacks and destruction of Jerusalem. He must have done a very important work in preserving these scriptures and bringing it back into Jerusalem and across the temple was rebuilt and re-established. So Ezra is credited to this and doing this. And the criteria, as I mentioned, why the Jewish people regarded these 39 books as sacred, very important criteria. Again, it wasn't like some committee was sitting and deciding these things. It was something that just happened in the life of these Hebrews. And they began to regard these 39 books. It was, you know, the inspiration was the hand of God upon the speaker. Could he be recognized as a genuine prophet of God? Did he agree with the teachings of the earlier prophets? What was already given to them? Did other subsequent prophets recognize these as inspired scriptures? And then obviously they'll all survive through time. So these are implicit criteria and it's implicit meaning it's not like, you know, some committee was sitting and said, okay, we have these fine criteria and the text that fulfills these criteria, we will make it sacred. No, no, no. As these books were being written, they were accepted as sacred because of these reasons. The person speaking was speaking out of inspiration. The person speaking was a genuine prophet of God. And as it was being written, yeah, it's an agreement with the doctrine of God and the teaching that we have received starting from the words given to us through Moses and it is being recognized by prophets. And of course, it's a right through time. So by 400 BC, Malachi is the last recognized prophet by this time these 39 books are already in place, including the writings the words of Malachi, the prophet. And so after that, nothing else has been added to this collection of 39 books, which today we call as the Old Testament, right? Because after Malachi, there was no other recognized prophet who came on the scene until John the Baptist. That is we crossing over into what we refer to as the New Testament period. So until Malachi, or after Malachi, Malachi was the last one, the last recognized prophet. After him, there was no recognized prophet. And there were like I mentioned, there was, you know, many different historical writings. And after Malachi, there were other things that were written. But these were not considered sacred because they didn't meet the previous criteria. And these were not writings of prophets, of men upon whom, people upon whom God was. And so the Jewish people, and neither did the church at a later point, considered these writings during after Malachi, the prophet, they didn't consider them as sacred. They didn't meet that criteria. They didn't meet the canon, but the standard by which these books were selected, there was no evidence of divine inspiration in, you know, these other books. Although the Catholic Church and some of the Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, they look, they include these scriptures under the section called apocrypha. But they're merely considered human works are just, you know, some writings of people literature, but they're not considered sacred. Then we transition to the New Testament period, which after Malachi, 400 years of silence, then they have John the Baptist coming on the scene. And the four gospels being written, the four gospels are essentially a record of what happened from the time of John the Baptist leading into the ministry of the Lord Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And these were written again during the first 100 years as, so within a 17 year period after the actual events. So that means we say the life of the ministry of Jesus, and these are approximate dates, 80 till about 80, 30 or D33. Then you have the gospels being written within the next 50 to 70 years, the four gospels are written, and then the writings of the apostles and so on. But they were not canonized at that time. The scriptures were written initially the words of Jesus were transmitted orally. The apostles were sharing, speaking, preaching. This is what Jesus taught us, this is what Jesus said. And then they were then written down by the apostles. There was the revelation given through Paul, which was also written down in letters. So these things were written down, but they were not immediately called the New Testament. They knew Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul's letters, the other apostles, James, Jude, Peter, and John. They wrote the other letters, but these were not compiled together. They were recognized for what they were. These are the writings of the apostles, they were written, they were recognized, of course, during the early times of the early church. It was only around AD 300, that means going about 200 years after the writings. So if you say the writings were written during the first hundred years or during the 50 years after the death period resurrection of Jesus, 50 to 70 years after that, they were written, they were recognized that they were written by the apostles. So the letters were there, but they had not been put together as the New Testament. Everybody was still recognizing. These are the writings of the apostles, yes. But it was only around 350 AD, about 250 years later, at a bishop of Alexandria, that he officially stated in these 27 books, we are going to recognize as sacred books of the New Testament. Up until the time, people in a very loose way were recognizing these things. And you have, in this little example here, the apostolic that was during those first hundred years, the teachings were transmitted, spoken, written down, people recognized the right things. The next 150 years, again, the teachings were held with great respect and authority. It was all written down. The sacred scriptures were there, but they had not yet officially put them all together, then came later on in a very loose way. People were recognizing, hey, these books, some were looking at 26, 27. These are sacred scriptures. These are the writings of the apostles. So different councils or groups of leaders, elders, were recognizing these books. The heads of different churches were recognizing these books as New Testament. And eventually around AD 350, it was officially, as I mentioned earlier, it was officially being stated by these leaders that these 27 books are the books of the New Testament. So again, it's not a set one single committee that decided this, but we are seeing that as these were written, people were recognizing these were being written by the apostles, they were holding them with high regard as authority. They were making copies of their sharing, teaching, preaching from it. And then eventually the heads of different churches. And then around that region, we're talking about around the Mediterranean, the churches were established by that time. They began to recognize these 27 books, this collection for these seven books, as the canon of scripture. And so these 27 books, along with 39 books of the Old Testament, then became the Bible. Now remember what we said, the Lord Jesus quoted extensively from the 39 books of the Old Testament. And the early church began, so we're talking about the first 30 years of the early church from AD 30 to up to AD 60, actually Paul's handwriting is letters around AD 45. So at least the first 15 years, most of the teaching, the preaching of the early church was from the Old Testament. They recognized because Jesus means a preach from the Old Testament. The first 15 years, they didn't have what we refer to as New Testament. They didn't have any of the letters of the Apostle Paul yet. So those first 15 years under Paul's that are writing, and then the gospels, everything was recorded. They were preaching from the Old Testament scriptures, along with the teachings of Jesus, which they personally heard. That was the essence of the preaching, the teaching. So the early church implicitly accepted 39 books of the Old Testament as part of the Holy Scriptures. It became part of the church because that was the preaching and the teaching, which was actually started by Jesus. Jesus said, hey, these 39 books are speaking about me. The Apostles continued it. They quoted and taught from the Old Testament plus everything they heard Jesus preach and teach during the earthly ministry. And then came the record of scripture, which is the writings of the Apostle Paul, the writing of the four gospels. Finally, the book of Revelation around 1819 was written. So the 39 books of the Old Testament became part of the New Testament church. It is part of our faith. Our faith is based on the teachings of the Old Testament scripture, along with the 27 books of the New Testament. And so this was compiled together as the Bible. So that term, Bible, again, it was only around 200 AD that people started referring to using the Bible, which in a very loose way referred to the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books that were accepted as the written scriptures by the Apostles. In a very loose way, but only later on around mid 350 AD, it was officially recognized. And then it was very much later, around 1560, the chapters and verses were introduced. The English Bible, the first Bible in English, chapter verse was the Geneva Bible, published around 1560. So it was a long way off before we got the English Bible and got it in the form that we have today in chapter verse. So let me pause here. So that kind of gives us a little background on how the canon of scripture came together and how we have these 39 plus 27 books of the Bible. I'll pause here before we get into the translation and take any questions that we might have. Any questions? This is about the canon of scripture. How did the scriptures come together? You are good to do. I'll follow it me. Obviously, you get lost somewhere. It seems like everyone has, you're most welcome to ask questions anytime. All right, maybe before we start, next. So what we've done is we talked about the canon of scripture, how these 39 plus 27 books all came together. Our next question is why, how are translations done? So remember, Old Testament, Hebrew, mainly Hebrew, New Testament, mainly Greek. Today we have English Bibles. We can read it in English and not just English, but we have so many versions of English Bible. So we want to understand how these translations are done. And secondly, why are there so many versions of the Bible? What is the difference between, you know, these different versions of the Bible? Why are people continuing to make new versions? What's the core purpose behind it? Why can't we just stay with King James or new King James? Why are we having these new, you know, versions? Okay. So yeah, we're in the same. We learned the canon of scripture, the Old Testament surface. Okay, great. Let's go. It's good to revise. I don't repeat that. Okay. So let's pause here. We'll come back in 10 minutes and then we'll get into looking at translations. How are these English translations done? What's the difference between the different English versions of the Bible? So we should finish that and then with that we're going to wrap up this lesson and we'll move into lesson number 10 after that. Okay. So we'll get back in 10 minutes.