 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 240, Kalashen's Q&A. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey Mike, how you doing this week? Pretty good. Let's talk about our epic fantasy face-off in our football league or not. Yeah, no, we can't. Hey, I was competitive. I made it, I lost by five points, and if I would have started my normal people rather than trying to make a big move, I would have won. But I didn't do that, you know? I swung for the fences, I picked up some new guys, I tried to do something big. It didn't pan out. It backfired, but hey, I came five points short, at least I mean, sweat a little bit. This is Maury's greatness right here, because I had bi-week troubles, and he just, he put on his draft wizard hat, and I was able to fill the gaps. Yeah, no, you're crushing it. That's what great teams do. You're leading it, you're number one in the league, and I think you've only lost one game, so you're like eight and one, or seven and one? I'm seven and one, yeah. It makes me wonder now, how in the world I lost another game. I must have done something while Maury was asleep, and I didn't have his supervision. You're crushing it. It's not fun for us guys here on the bottom who are just trying to find a way to get into the playoffs. It's amazing how fast the time goes. It's almost over. It's already halfway through. It's like halfway through, yeah. It's already November. Where does the time go? I'll take it, because my other leagues, man, I can't buy a win, it's just, I'm struggling to stay at 500, and a couple I'm underneath, it's such a weird, weird season, but there you go. The pugnacious pugs have Patrick Mahomes, so that sounds a lot of fun. Who went to my college, so since he's doing so good, I just pretend like I'm doing good because he's my college quarterback, so go Red Ranges. He's the real deal. It's awesome. It's awesome. All right, Mike. Well, I want to remind everybody that we're going to be in Denver in a couple weeks. November 16th, I believe, is that Friday at 7 p.m., in the upper room at the Community Church. Yeah, the Denver Community Church, so please, it's free to the public, open to everybody. We hope you'll join us at 7 p.m. there in the upper room and bring your questions and hopefully we'll have a good time. Yeah, well, we usually have a good time at those things, so I would expect no loss. Sounds good. All right, Mike. Well, we've got a handful of questions here specifically about the Book of Colossians, so I'm ready, Mike, if you are. Yeah, let's jump in. All right, our first one is from Leon. I was raised a Trinitarian, and I am still one, but I find some difficulties in the New Testament concerning the Holy Spirit. When or almost every time Paul greets a church, it is with the phrase, Grace to you from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, without mention of the Holy Ghost. Colossians 2, 2 describes the mystery of the Gospel as the Father and Son's plan. Again, no mention of the Holy Ghost and Revelation. We see this amazing throne room scene, but again, very little of the Holy Ghost. So what are we to make of this as Trinitarians? Why is there a perceived lack of acknowledgement of the third figure of the Trinity? Yeah, I think the keyword there is perceived, and I would say it's a misperception. You know, generally, the angle of the question feels like a hermeneutic of exclusion, an interpretive approach that is fixated on exclusion. In other words, the idea that if something isn't mentioned everywhere or even mentioned in a preponderance of places with specific phrasing, that it has no role, and I think that's flawed. I would say, you know, if you actually look at Colossians 2, 2, it doesn't seem to really say what I think is lurking in the mind of the question here, in the mind of Leon. So let me just read that, or I'll read the first two verses, Colossians 2 here. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen the face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ. Well, God's mystery isn't the Holy Spirit, it's Christ, because Christ's work on the cross is the thing that unites Jew and Gentile, because he is the promised seed. You know, mentioned in Genesis 12, 3 and other places after God divorced the nations, that it was through Abraham's seed, one particular seed, of course, where this situation would be reversed. And the seed there has to be physical, so it has to be Christ, so it really has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, anyway, in that sense, in that verse. So I think we're sort of over-reading or maybe under-reading Colossians 2-2, again, with this sort of hermeneutic of exclusion. Again, Christ is the mystery, the means by which salvation would be provided. And so the wording makes sense in terms of what the subject matter is. Secondly, I would say the Spirit is included along with Jesus in statements about the Gospel elsewhere. How can we possibly conclude that the Holy Spirit isn't part of the Gospel, the plan in passages, in a number of passages? Let me just give you a few examples. I'll give you some examples from Paul, since Paul's the author of Colossians. So there's actually a number of these that we could look at, but Romans 1-4, that the Son or Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. When you have verses like that that link the Spirit to the resurrection, which is the key to the plan's fulfillment. So how in the world can we say the Spirit isn't an equal partner in all this? Romans 8-2, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ, in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Again, it's the Spirit who baptizes people into the body of Christ. Inclusion in the body of Christ is where you get your assurance of salvation. Again, it's indispensable. You have Christ's body, well, again, who's the mechanism by which individuals, believers are joined to that body, united to Christ to use another Pauline phrase. What's the Spirit? Romans 8-9, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Again, it's just that whole mechanism about the body of Christ. The Spirit in these passages is absolutely indispensable. The Spirit is required for these things to be true. Romans 15-16, that Paul was called to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Again, there you have that link. So in this case, you even do have the Spirit brought into the discussion of this union of Jew and Gentile. So the Spirit doesn't get excluded. He might get excluded in some places where Paul is talking about Christ as the mystery. And the mystery itself, again, is this inclusion. But here we have the Spirit as the one who brings it all together, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. I'll just do some rapid fire here. 1 Corinthians 6-11, Paul mentions of several sins and the preceding verses. And he says, Such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. I mean, if that isn't, just look at the way these things are juxtaposed. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Jesus and the Spirit, again, they're set side by side there. Now, God isn't there if we're operating by, again, a hermeneutic of exclusion. Has God out of the picture now? No, there's no requirement that all three persons be mentioned in passages that relate in some way where there's a doctrinal item, in this case, the mystery, the gospel. There's no requirement that all three persons need to be mentioned in passages that discuss that thing. I mean, there's no rule for that. And so to observe where the Spirit is not included in some of these and conclude, well, I guess he's not equal. But again, that's just a flawed approach, even though I can see how people could be steered in that direction by someone who wants them to focus on the exclusion. Let me try to find another one here. The grace of the Lord Jesus, this is 2 Corinthians 13-14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Well, there are all three in there. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. Relations 3-14. So that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. And again, there's that mystery thing from Colossians so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith, linking the Spirit into the mystery there, even though the Spirit isn't mentioned in Colossians 2-2. He's brought into the equation in other passages. I think you get the point at this point. Who gives us everlasting life? Is it Jesus or is it the Spirit? You know, we might be inclined to think of John 3-16. Oh, it's Jesus. It's the work of Jesus. Well, the Holy Spirit is actually talked about that way in certain passages. 2 Corinthians 3-6. Who has made it sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Galatians 6-8. The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Ephesians 2-18. For through him, we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. And through him, there you have Ephesians 2-18. Through him, Jesus, then you have the Spirit, then you have the Father. So again, this is just something I think for the general listener here to be wary of. Don't let people steer you in a certain direction through the hermeneutic of exclusion. It's tactically not kosher, if I can put it that way, because there is no rule that says all three persons have to be listed in every passage that talks about a subject that all three persons have something to do with. You might get all three of them there. Maybe the preponderance of the verses you don't. But if you get two out of three and all the other ones, and it's very evident that all three have a role to play in the same thing. Well, that tells you something too. It tells you that all three are at the same level. It tells you all three are indispensable. It tells you all three, you pull one out and it's not going to work. You need all three. And so again, the way we think about Godhead, I think we need to be careful in our methodology. And the last thing I would say here is the very idea of the new covenant. I mean, think about this, think of the whole question from this angle. The very idea of the new covenant, which Jesus said his body and blood are the guarantors of Unites Christ and the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit was part of the prophesied new covenant in the Old Testament. Passages in Ezekiel and Jeremiah specifically mentioned the Spirit in connection with the new covenant. And there's Jesus in the upper room saying, this is my body and blood of the new covenant. The Spirit belongs there. The Spirit is an equal partner. Again, so we need to be careful about our method here. Heath has our next question and he asks, the New World Translation Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses puts the word other in Colossians 1. By him, all other things were created. He is before all other things. Some Jehovah Witness apologists defend this by saying lots of English Bible translations insert other in various places where it doesn't appear in the original Greek. How would Mike respond to that? Except for that one. Well, here's how I would respond to it. I would say it's silly. Again, I think this is Colossians 1.16 that the phrasing is drawn from. If you're going to do this in Colossians 1.16, it's contrived. It's a purely contrived theological insertion by the Jehovah's Witnesses. There's nothing in the Greek text to justify inserting the word other. And we know the drill. The Jehovah's Witnesses just do this sort of thing because they can't win the argument with exegesis of the text that actually is there. So now we have to insert words that aren't there so that we can win our argument. Again, that's a little thing I like to call cheating. But this is what they do. They just move the goalposts when they need to. They cheat. I think that the shoe would be interesting to have the shoe on the other foot. This would be like anti-Jehovah's Witnesses inserting or deleting things in verses to make them look even worse. How about inserting the word God, capital G-O-D? Every time the name Jesus appears just because the two are juxtaposed in certain verses. Certain verses we get God, capital G, and Jesus. Well, why don't we just put God everywhere in the name Jesus? See, Jesus is God. Look at that. It belongs here because it shows up in some other verse. Again, it's ridiculous. It's silly. I'll bet the Jehovah's Witnesses would cry foul if we did that. Well, again, if they're going to cry foul there, then they need to stop just putting words in passages to try to make their theology. You know, it's cheating because they can't win the argument on exegesis. Marissa from Slovenia has two questions and the first one is, I have a question about the passage about the Colossian heresy. Colossians 2.8, I've read some commentaries on the Storchea. Did the Protonostics and or some Cavalistic sex employ the elements of water, fire, earth, air, literally as some kind of tools in their ceremonies? Or was it rather invoking the entities that were supposed to rule this elements by some spiritual bribes or passwords? Is there a connection to the passage in Matthew 12, where the Pharisees accused Jesus of using the power of Beelzebub? Yeah, I mean, Jesus never used, we actually covered this when we did an episode on, I can't remember what the number was, we did an episode on exorcism as part of the Messianic mosaic. Yeah, I can't remember what number it was, but we have had discussions both in that episode and I think maybe one other Q&A about Jesus and exorcism, or maybe I'm thinking about part of my demon's book at any rate. What's interesting about Jesus with exorcism, let's just start there, is that there were exorcists in the Jewish tradition, in antiquity. The Kabbalah stuff is so much later. I really don't even think we need to care about what somebody's saying about the Bible a thousand years after the biblical period, because they're just making stuff up at Kabbalah. It's just mystical stuff. But there were exorcists in the first century, and they left writings, they left different incantations on different objects, this is a whole sub-discipline of biblical scholarship. What's interesting is Jesus doesn't, let me back up and say it this way, all of those, they're incantations and such within the Jewish community when it came to exorcism, and you can apply this to the Christian tradition too. They all have some appeal to a higher authority to cast out a demon. Jesus never does that, and again, scholars have noticed this. He doesn't use formulaic phrases. He doesn't do the kind of things that his contemporary exorcists, even those within his own community do. He doesn't appeal to a higher authority because he doesn't need one. He is the authority over demons, and this is something that just stands out within the whole context of exorcisms in the gospel. They're going to accuse him by using the power of Be'elzebub because they know he's not doing it in their name or with their consent or with their approval, and he's also not doing it the way they do it, and they don't want to believe that he actually is the higher power to which they have to appeal. So what's left? Well, we're just going to say he's appealing to some entity that's more powerful than the demons, and the only candidate you really got for that is Be'elzebub, the Satan figure. There's a certain logic to why they say this, and it can be kind of comical. Again, if you really know the backdrop of this. It's pretty poignant in terms of its theology that here's the one standing before them that needs no higher authority, and in fact, is equal to the authority that they appeal to, and they just don't realize it or they're unwilling to accept it. Now the earlier part of the question about the Stoikeia, it is true when we talked about the Stoikeia, one of the contexts in which that term is used is to refer to water, fire, earth, the fundamental elements of the universe as they were conceived back in the first century. So we can't necessarily conflate that understanding of Stoikeia, the fundamental elements with the Stoikeia, who are spirit beings, even though there are texts that do have them overlapping to some extent because of the very ancient idea that, for instance, the elements of weather were controlled either by God or some other entity or something like that. So there was this cosmic battle going on behind things that people experienced meteorologically or just in terms of natural catastrophe, that sort of thing. So again, it's conceivable that they could have done this. I'm not a student of Gnostic ritual, so I'm not aware of any specific examples. However, I am aware that the Manichean sect, who if you know something about the Manichees, that it's an early Jewish mystical sect, they actually did part of this. You can find these sorts of things in their ritual language and their ceremony. And of course, the Greek mystery religions, they did use these elements and they do, you can find them as part of, again, ceremonial statements or phrases, rituals, that sort of thing. So there's a verbal element and then there's a physical element as well. They would use fire and water and whatnot. So when it comes to those two things, yeah, I mean, you can find examples there. I don't know specifically about the Gnostics though. Gnosticism, again, tends to be this sort of amalgamation of streams that flow into what would become known as Gnosticism. So I wouldn't be surprised. I just don't know any specifics. This is actually sort of a good thesis question. If Marissa was a graduate student, I'd say, Oh, it's a good idea. Just do a survey of the literature and tell me if you find anything. And if you do, that's your thesis. So that's the best I can do with that one. All right. Marissa also wants to know that Mike mentioned Egyptian Hermeticism as one of the sources of the Proto Kabbalah. Is there a historical proof that Hermetic texts influenced later Zoroastrian doctrines and practices, or did they both evolve from a common root? Yeah, it's really, it's kind of difficult. On one hand, let's just start with Egyptian Hermeticism. Okay, we have to realize that what we think of as Egyptian Hermeticism was produced in the Hellenistic era, the Greek era, because it's in Greek. We don't have Egyptian texts that refer to themselves as, you know, in this way. Egyptian Hermeticism, again, produced in the Hellenistic era was allegedly, it's presented as the teachings of the God Thoth. You know, well, it sure it would be kind of nice if we had sort of an Egyptian original that could actually validate that idea. But we don't. Again, this material is Hellenistic in origin. Now, since that's the case, the Hellenistic Empire was one that preceded, well, how do I want to put this? You know, you've got your, if you think of the flow of biblical history, okay, you've got your Persian, you get your Babylonian Empire, you get your Persian Empire, then you get the Greek Empire, then you get the Romans. Okay, so yes, Hellenism, you know, preceded the New Testament era, again, the Gnostic era, you know, by several centuries. We get that. Zoroastrianism though was a precursor to this. So Zoroastrianism would actually be something around before, technically, you know, the Egyptian hermeticism, again, that is actually Greek. Now, they are pretty close though. So it would not be a surprise at all if, you know, there was some cross fertilization here. And this is typical of the Hellenistic culture. They, when Alexander spread his empire over the ancient world, he didn't like root out all preexisting religion and all that kind of stuff and just dump it, throw it away and ban it. He doesn't do that. He does focus on syncretism. Okay, he wants to Hellenize what's there, not eliminate what's there and replace it, you know, with only Greek thinking, but he wants to sort of, again, baptize it if I can use that catchphrase. He wants to inject, you know, Hellenistic thinking into that and marry the two, then come out with somebody who is positively predisposed toward him and his empire and Greek culture. So you're actually going to have some relationship here between them, but chronologically, again, technically speaking, if we're talking about this thing we know as Hermes Trismegistus, you know, and all that, all that sort of stuff, the Greek title of the Egyptian god Thoth. Again, that's Greek in origin, so it would actually come after the Zoroastrianism. You know, in most of the tractates, I think I have a little, let me just look up something really quick here in a little entry on Hermes Trismegistus. This is from Barrett's New Testament background, C.K. Barrett. This is the late 1980s, 1987. He writes, Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice grade Hermes is the Greek title of the Egyptian god Thoth. Trismegistus probably represents an Egyptian expression, meaning very great, and served to distinguish the foreign god from the native Greek Hermes. In most of the tractates, Hermes himself, or a similar divine figure, communicates secret knowledge, Gnosis, about God, creation, or about salvation. Again, Gnosis is a Greek term. He communicates certain ideas about those things to a disciple who is sometimes but not always named. The revelation is generally given in the form of a dialogue in which the disciple's share is limited to asking questions and expressing admiration. The data that Hermetic writings cannot be established was certainly, but it seems probable that most of them are composed between AD 100 and 200. That's a little, and you're still in the throws of the Hellenistic world. Even though the Romans are in power, the world speaks Greek again. The old thing, why was the New Testament written in Greek? Because everybody spoke Greek, and Greek culture has spread everywhere. You're still basking, if I can use a positive term like that, you're still basking in Greek thought in these eras. This is definitely after the Persian period. First century, second century, that sort of thing. We have to just keep this in mind with respect to this question. But again, since Alexander had a policy of syncretism, marrying things together rather than their eradication, it's certainly possible that you're going to find similar streams or similar threads in both corpuses, the Zoroastrian literature and then the Greek literature of Hermes Trismegistus. Justin has a question about Colossians 2.16. Torah observant Christians say evangelical Christians interpret this verse wrong and that Paul was really saying the reverse. The Colossians had started to observe the Feast of Yahweh and were being judged for doing so. Is this interpretation possible? You know, I'm not completely sure what the question is angling for. So it is the idea of the question that Jewish believers were criticizing Gentiles for not doing Jewish things or is the idea that Gentile believers were criticizing some among their own number for doing Jewish things. That seems to be the last one there. The second one seems to be where this is going, but I'm not quite sure. In either case, though, I would say that Paul's statement in the very next verse sort of answers this question now. So 2.16 says, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Again, I'm going to assume that the question is the Torah observant Christians are saying, well, these Christians at Colossi were starting to do Jewish stuff and then getting criticized from people within their own community or maybe even Jews. I mean, it's hard to believe that Jewish believers would criticize them for doing this because that would sort of be kind of what they want or they might feel good about it. They may become more like us. So it seems to me that maybe what the question is angling for is you have Gentiles criticizing other Gentiles for doing Jewish things. Regardless of that, like I said, the next verse, to me answers the question, here's the next verse. These, again, these questions of food and drink, festival, new moon or Sabbath, these are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Again, the law is not the reality of our right standing with God. Christ is. He is the substance. When we went through Colossians, we camped a little bit on this term, the Greek term translated substance here in the ESV, and we talked about how it's a term that is used to represent that which is real, the reality. So the reality of our right standing with God that Paul has been talking about earlier in the passage, being rooted and built up in him. It's not being rooted and built up in the law. The reality of our right standing with God is Christ. It is not the Torah. It is not the law. If a follower of Jesus wants to be Torah observant, fine. If he doesn't want to be Torah observant, fine. This is I think the point, but even if you say that they were being unfairly criticized, these Gentiles for doing Jewish things, I mean the Torah observant Christians that are probably sort of in the background of this question want people to follow the law, fine. If you have a Messianic congregation and you want to observe the Jewish calendar and you want to observe Sabbath, you want to teach for whatever reason that you should do this or that and food and drink, okay, so long as it doesn't topple the gospel, so long that it doesn't replace the gospel, because these things are a shadow of things to come. They're a dim glimpse, but the reality, the reality is Christ. Again, Paul is explicitly clear here. These things do not replace the gospel. The gospel does not depend on them. The gospel didn't get to be the gospel through the assistance of the law and its rules, okay. I don't know how else to say it. You know, if Torah observing Christians use Scripture to convince Gentiles they should be Torah observant in terms of salvation, then they are suggesting that Christ is insufficient, okay. And again, that's clearly not a biblical New Testament teaching. Why convince someone of the shadow when they already possess the substance? So this is, as Paul makes it, I think, an issue of preference and nothing more. So don't let anyone pass judgment on you either for not doing it or for doing it, because these things are a shadow. Christ is the substance. Anyone who makes the Torah more than Christ or flips this around that the Torah is the substance and Christ is the shadow is just acting on some inner proclivity, inner impulse to want salvation to be linked to their performance or personal practice. Let's just be honest about it. They have some sort of guilty conscience or some sort of internal need to want to be congratulated in some way, that they contributed something through their own works to their salvation, okay. That is contrary to New Testament teaching about the nature of the gospel. Christopher has always heard in sermons that the primary reason that Paul used a scribe while writing his letters to the churches was due to poor vision, possibly even through not necessarily connected to the thorn in the flesh referred to 2nd Corinthians 12 seven, is it possible that the reason that Paul emphasized that he wrote in his own hand in Colossians 418 is due to have in cataracts or singularly poor eyesight, which made it difficult or clumsy for him to write himself as opposed to using a scribe, particularly in light of his writing being referred to as large in Galatians 611. Yeah, and the large reference there may just refer to Paul's use of capital letters, not necessarily size. Again, is it possible that this is a poor vision thing? Sure, it's possible, but there's no evidence for it. I mean, that's just being honest. I mean, it's a speculation, it's all it is. There's nothing that rules it out. There's nothing that really suggests it either. Again, it's pure speculation. In our last episode on Colossians, I mentioned an article on this phenomena, literacy and using scribes that got into this whole thing about writing, being able to write and not just read or speak a language that wasn't your first language in the ancient world. I would recommend that. That article is accessible to my newsletter subscribers. Again, the bigness of letters may have been to emphasize Paul's ability to write. It may have just been the use of unsealed letters. These are all speculations as to why that particular comment is made. Is it plausible? There are lots of other reasons, again, offered in that article that, yes, that are also speculation because Paul doesn't actually tell us, neither is any other verse, but that are certainly workable and make sense. I don't think I could bring myself to say this is implausible. I would say it's probably less plausible than some of the other options, but if people are interested in this, again, if you subscribe to the newsletter, you can go in and get that article. I don't remember the author right off the top of my head, but you can listen to the episode on Colossians 4 where I give the title. But if you're in the newsletter archive where I keep the articles, you can see the title of the article anyway. It's with my own hand or something like that is in the title, so you could get that and read the whole thing. It's actually pretty lengthy and interesting as far as scribal habits and the use of secretaries, use of an emmanuance in the ancient world. Robert has our next question. I've heard that the term Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, Colossians 316, are the headings, titles for the Psalms and the Septuagint. Is this true? And if so, is there any reason to believe that Paul is directing the Colossian believers to sing anything other than the 150 biblical Psalms and the passage? Well, I can handle the second part of the question with the first. No, this isn't really plausible. So the second part of the question just sort of falls by the wayside. Again, there's no... Let's just put it this way. The argument doesn't make sense for several reasons. This has me wondering if Robert is a worship leader under assault somewhere. But the argument doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a couple of reasons. One, if you search for the term Psalmoi, that's the plural, a nominative plural in the Septuagint, you'll find that it occurs in certain passages that aren't the Psalms and that are not really referring to the content of the Psalms. An example would be 1 Samuel 1618. So this is the same chapter where David is the shepherd boy and Samuel has come to town and is going to anoint him and David's out in the field when Samuel's looking at his brother. So David, he's not king. He hasn't really done anything except 10 sheep. So there he is. And in 1 Samuel 1618, you get this reference. One of the young men answered, behold, I've seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skilled in playing. A man of valor, a man of war, prudent speech, man of good presence, the Lord is with him. So David, but it was out there because again, he's a young man. This is before he has any status. It's before the David and Goliath thing in chapter 17. So somebody knows that there's this shepherd kid out there that can play a mean harp. He knows music. He's skillful in playing. The skillful in playing idea is the same term. So he's singing things. It doesn't say that he is writing them. It's just sort of a neutral reference using this term because he's singing songs. He might be composing them. We don't know. There's nothing that requires it. Nothing else where it states that David was out there saying, I'm going to be writing songs here. I'm going to collect them because I'll bet masses of Israelites will want to read these and sing them themselves. There's no indication of that. He's trying to put his time to good use. He's entertaining himself or maybe somebody else. So you have sort of neutral references that use the term. Second, the last term, the spiritual songs, is odysse, which gets translated in English as odysse. And it kind of undermines the idea of the question that we're only referring to the 150 Psalms here in Paul's reference to Psalms and spiritual songs because there are plenty of odes that were composed prior to Paul's time that are not in the 150 Psalms. Some of them are in the pseudobagraphical literature. Some of them wind up in the Septuagint, again, which Paul has access to. So the term is used widely. Again, outside of the biblical material, it's also used in the Septuagint of unnamed music prior to the creation of the Psalter. Judges 512, awake, awake. Deborah, awake, awake. Break out in a song. Break out in an ode. It's the word odai. You have it used in places, in scripture, in the Septuagint. Again, that are not the Psalms. Exodus 15.1, the song of Moses. Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying so on and so forth. Again, it's not in the Psalms, Deuteronomy 32.44. Moses came and recited all the words of this song, Deuteronomy 32, in the hearing of the people, he and Joshua, the Son of Dunn. Again, it's not the Psalms. You can't really say that when Paul penned, hey, sing to yourselves in Psalms and spiritual songs, that he was isolating his thoughts to the 150 Psalms that we have in the Psalter. I would also add that the logic of the question is kind of flawed. What I mean by that is this, just because the Psalms are a focus, because you have Paul's reference to the Psalms, him, the spiritual songs, just because the Psalms are a focus of that statement, you know, honestly, they're going to form the bulk of what a Jewish believer would have known, and even Gentiles, again, because they're reading the Septuagint. That doesn't mean that other things are excluded. In other words, Paul doesn't stick a prohibition in there. Speaking to yourselves in Psalms and spiritual songs and absolutely nothing else, because it's ungodly or whatever, Paul doesn't actually express an exclusion of other things. The logic is kind of akin to saying that since 2 Timothy 2.15, let me read that in ESV, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth. King James has studied to show they self-approved. This logic about the music here is akin to saying that, well, in light of what 2 Timothy 2.15 says, the part of being approved by God is rightly handling the word of truth, which is scripture, that we shouldn't be allowed to read anything else. It's just silly. That's not the point of what's being said. The point is to elevate something or direct people to something else, something that they can sing. It's not to exclude everything else. So the argument, the approach, the argument just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. All right, Mark has our last question. I was hoping that Mike could spend three or four minutes given a rundown of how the immanuances used may have factored into some of the work by other New Testament writers. This comes to mind with the thought of his comments on the authorship of Hebrews as being someone who was at a very high level of Greek grammar usage. Yeah, Mark also emailed me this and I thought this was worth tacking on because it's Colossians. So we might as well, this is going to be more than three or four minutes because I had come across, I can't remember what year the book is, but it's actually a book on first century letter writing and the use of immanuances. Let me just look at the 2004 E Randolph Richards, the title is Paul and First Century Letter Writing, Colin, Secretary's Composition and Collection. It's an inner varsity press title from 2004. So I'm going to read parts of this. It's probably a little overkill on what Mark is asking, but I think he will find it interesting and maybe somebody else out there in the audience will too. So this, let me read first before I get to Richards. I was more familiar with Comfort's book Encountering the Manuscripts, which is an introduction to New Testament textual criticism. So let me read a little section from that and then I'll go to Richards book. His Richards, I think is more focused, but what Comfort says is still worthwhile here. Comfort writes, according to the custom of the day, the immanuances or secretary of official documents was often the same person who carried the document to its destination and read it aloud to its intended audience. Since this person had been present at the time of writing, he could explain to the hearers anything that needed explaining. Since most people were not literate, on average only 10% of the population in Hellenistic times could read, they depended on oral reading for communication. Thus, for example, some of the epistles written by Paul could have been delivered by his immanuances, who would then read the letter to the church and explain anything that needed explaining. In this light, it is possible that Ticacus was Paul's immanuances for Ephesians and Colossians. He wrote down the epistles for Paul as Paul dictated and then delivered them to the Ephesians and Colossians. Most likely the letter to the Ephesians is the encyclical epistle that traveled with Ticacus to Ephesus. So again, if you assume that he is the immanuances, that makes a lot of sense. We just don't know for sure. So back to the quotation. Let's see. It's most likely in the Ephesians is the missing letter to Laodicea. This epistle is probably one of the same as the letter Paul mentions in Colossians 4.16, where he tells the Colossians, C2, that you also read the letter from Laodicea. This language indicates that a letter presumably written by Paul would be coming to the Colossians from Laodicea. Since it is fairly certain that Ephesians was written at the same time as Colossians, Ticacus carrying both epistles, and again was very likely Paul's immanuances for both, it can be assumed that Paul would expect that the encyclical epistle known as Ephesians would eventually circulate from Colossia to Laodicea. So that's what Comfort says. Now I want to read you. Richards has a whole book on, again, secretaries, composition, collection, how procedurally how this was done, drawn from contemporary Greek and Roman sources, how letter writing, especially. So what I'm going to read you here, what Richards' book focuses on is Paul. And so this is about the writing of letters, not necessarily the Gospels, but letters, which is a good part of the New Testament. So Richards begins this way. He says, Paul's writings show clear evidence of careful composition. They were not dashed off one evening in the flurry of mission activity. And then he quotes Betz, which is a major commentator on Colossians. Betz says, the very employment of an immanuances, a secretary, rules out a haphazard writing of the letter and suggests the existence of Paul's draft and the copy by an immanuances or a sequence of draft composition and copy. That's the end of Betz's quote. In other words, if you're going to use an immanuances, you would use that guy. There's going to be some process of dictation and then talking about how to say this and how to say that. That sounds better than what I have. Let's cross that line off and replace it. There's going to be a process to producing this letter that by definition, the end product is going to be a careful thing. It's going to be well put together, well crafted. It's going to hit all the things that it needs to hit, so on and so forth. Betz is saying, if you're going to use one of these secretaries, this is to be expected. It's not just a haphazard. I got to fire this thing off and here you go. Paul's going to put some thought into this. Again, that makes a lot of sense. Elsewhere, Richard says, the use of a secretary is complicated further by the flexibility available to the sender. The author could grant to the secretary complete much little or no control over the content, style, and even the form of the letter. The examination of ancient letters below, and then he's going to go into a bunch of these, reveals that the role of the secretary may be described as a spectrum. At one extreme, the secretary was a transcriber who had no input in the letter, taking strict dictation from the author. At the other extreme, the secretary composed the letter for the author. Most letters fell somewhere in the middle, somewhere in between. On this spectrum, we can mark the two clear extremes. The middle area is less clearly defined. In the case of a transcriber, the author dictated the letter that was then recorded verbatim by the secretary. If a final polished copy was prepared later, the contents remained unchanged. In this role, the secretary was merely a transcriber. On the other extreme, the secretary might be the true composer of the letter. In this role, the author instructed his secretary to send a letter to someone for some general purpose without specifying the exact contents. For example, an author could tell the secretary to write a letter to an associate in a particular town to tell him that he had been providentially delayed in coming and that when he was able, he would visit. It was possible to compose a personal letter from such general guidelines because of the highly stereotyped nature of most Greco-Roman letters, including even personal letters. The gray area in between these two extremes needs further elaboration. In this middle area, the secretary contributed in some way to the content of the letter. Perhaps the secretary who usually had more training in letter writing than the author edited the author's contents to conform better to epistolary standards. For example, the writer recited his letter while the secretary made extensive notes or perhaps even gave a rough draft to the secretary. In this role, the secretary was more like an editor because he was responsible for minor decisions about syntax and vocabulary and style. He remained, however, within the strict guidelines of the writer's oral or written draft. The secretary could also be permitted more latitude, working from notes that were far less extensive. In this broader role, the form, syntax, vocabulary and style, as well as specific pieces of content were contributed by the secretary who usually was more experienced in matters of epistolary expression. While the general content, perhaps the argumentation, remained the author's. Thus, the secretary's role ranged from transcriber to contributor to composer again or through this editorial idea. Then he proceeds to sort of elaborate on all that in his book. He even talks about things like dictation speed because the examples he pulls out, he has an example from Cicero and Seneca, Plutarch, Pliny the Younger. Again, there's even evidence of shorthand in letters where scribes, if you see shorthand in a letter, it's probably the guy's just dictating. He's rattling it off and scribes using some shorthand. Then he'll go back and then put all that into words that everybody knows because not everybody knows shorthand. You even have that process going on. Richard's book talks about a lot of these features that you find in contemporary examples, but at the end of the day, we don't actually know what Paul procedurally did. Did he use one of these methods or all of them? Did he shun some and favor others? We just don't know. What we know is that he used an emmanuensis and agreeing with Betz here. That argues that this wasn't just something that he's like, okay, I got five minutes and I got to shoot this letter off to the Ephesians. No, there was a lot more thought put into it. Procedurally, this is something that's going to not just get spealed out and then sent, where's the UPS envelope? I got to get this thing out of my hair as soon as possible. I hope it's Amazon Prime. There's nothing like that. They're going to take some time. Paul is going to make sure that he addresses what needs to be addressed on any given occasion. I think we can conclude from things like the end of Paul's letters when he says hi to people and he makes personal comments. Paul's in the room. This isn't a case where Paul just gives some vague instructions and then at the end of the scribe just makes people up. No, Paul is in the room. He has a personal attachment to a number of these people. It's not just at the end of the letters when Paul does these personal things in the course of his letters. While scribes, while an Emanuensis might be skilled professionally in how you construct a letter, what the proper form is, Paul is the one who's expert in the scriptures. It's Paul that needs to produce that kind of content, but he's working with an Emanuensis in some way. I think what we learned through this is, again, going back to Betz's pithy comment about if you're going to use one of these guys, then you make the best use of them. It's not just a robot. This is another individual, hey, is this clear? Is there something you don't understand? Or that person might suggest something like, well, I know lots of people over in Colossean. If you set it this way, they'll get it. There's going to be some give and take here. It's fascinating, but at the end of the day, we don't actually precisely know. And it might heighten the significance of Paul at the end of a letter like Colossians saying, hey, I'm putting my own hand to this. I'm not. If you go back and read that other article that we talked about in Colossians 4, if Paul can write, and again, it's not just speculation. There are some good reasons to think a case can be made that Paul wrote the letter to Philemon himself. If that's the case, Paul's saying, look, I'm not just somebody who can't write and has to dictate everything and hope I get a good, hope this guy's worth my money. I can write. And I'm going to put this final indication in my letter. I'm going to sign this with my own hand, maybe even in big letters again, for whatever he would say that. Who knows? Again, it's all speculative at a number of these points. But I think at the very least, we can know that Paul approached his letters with care and that, again, because of the nature of their content, they're not something that just anybody could produce in terms of content. Yes, maybe the form of the letter because letters do follow form. You can read a study of New Testament epistles and you're going to run into that every time. What were the form, the stock elements of how we do a letter? We do this too. Dear, so-and-so. I remember in grade school being taught how to write a letter. There's the opening salutation, then what you do in the first paragraph is a bit formulaic. You talk about the weather or whatever, how you're doing. There's a greeting. They're just parts of writing a letter at the end. You sign off in certain ways. Sincerely, Mike, okay? I was taught to do this. It's a very simplistic thing. As a child in grade school, they taught us how to do that, but anyone who's been to law school knows. There are ways to write a legal brief so that person who reads it knows that you're competent, because if you don't do it that way, they're going to think you're incompetent. How in the world did you get a law degree? There are just ways to do certain things in the literate world that have to be learned and observed, both for the sake of communication and also for the sake of having the person on the other end feel confident that the person who wrote this knows what they're talking about. Yes, and Emanuensis is important to get all those things right, so that Paul can't be accused of being a hack. On the other hand, it's Paul. Paul has a command of the scriptures. He's a command of doctrine. He spent a lot of time with the original apostles and so on and so forth. That content isn't something that can just be produced by anybody. It has to be produced by someone who was there, at least in terms of the post-resurrection context, and who knows the scriptures well. Again, I think it's instructive just to take this little rabbit trail. All right, Mike. Well, that's all the questions we have for this episode, so is there anything else you'd like to mention? This is it. If you have any more collisions, things to get off your chest, now's the time to do it. No, I think that's all I have for the episode, so good questions. All right. We appreciate everybody sitting in their questions. Please continue to do so at TrayStrictLimitGmail.com. Again, I want to thank Mike for answering their questions and everybody else for sending in those questions. I want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless.