 Welcome back. I hope you've had a good break. So we are going to go into a new testament survey, the third hour. We'll just do a quick recap of what we covered on Thursday last week, and then going to content for today. So last week we looked at, on Monday we looked at some of the political and religious history between Malachi and Matthew, those 400 years that passed between Malachi and Matthew. And then we looked at a few important things that play a role in the New Testament world. So we looked at people groups, we looked at places of worship, and we looked at sacred writings. So people groups who are mentioned in the New Testament, whose background we need to understand so that when we are looking at the New Testament, when we are reading about them, we know who exactly these people are. We looked at the Hebrews, how the Hebrews became the Israelites, and how the Israelites finally were reduced to the Jews, that is the tribe of Judah specifically, and how that tribe then started being called the Israelites, Jews, all of those terms were used interchangeably for the Judeans who remained in Judah. So we see that whole nation of Israel was divided into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, which was Israel in the North and Judah in the South. So Israel had 10 tribes and Judah had two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. And finally, the Hebrews, Israelites and Jews referred to the tribes remaining in Judah, just those tribes. The Jews and Samaritans. So we see the history of the Jews and Samaritans. Anyone remember some things about them? Do you want to give us a quick recap? Anyone online or in person? Okay. I'll go over. Easter, can I say, I can remember about the Samaritan woman. She had an encounter with Jesus and she said that we don't have anything common with the Jews because the Jews, they think they are a mixed culture. That's what I can remember, sister. Okay, thank you. So yes, the Jews and Samaritans didn't like each other. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans because they viewed the Samaritans as people who had abandoned the true God and abandoned true worship. And the Samaritans likewise disliked the Israelites because of this kind of tension that existed between them because the Jews looked down upon them. And the Samaritans historically were the original northern kingdom of Israel who had been sent into exile and there were other nations captured by the Assyrians who were sent back to live in that region. So it was those foreigners who had come in who had then also married some of the Israelites, had children with them. So it was a mixed group of people from different nations who were worshiping Yahweh and also worshiping other pagan gods. So the Jews basically didn't really view the Samaritans as true worshipers of God or true descendants of Jacob. And then the Jews likewise had their religion in Jerusalem in the temple and we look more into that today. So then we have the scribes who were teachers of the law which became something that was more important among the Jews to preserve their faith and they started to teach the people the law. We have the Sanhedrin which was a group of rulers who kind of executed Jewish law for the people. So while there was the Roman rule and the Roman law that existed, the Jews had their own set of rules and laws according to their scriptures that they wanted the Jews to follow. So anytime there was somebody who broke the Jewish laws, it would be something that the Sanhedrin would deal with, not the Roman authorities. Roman authorities were not concerned about Jewish laws being broken. The Sanhedrin was one who preserved that, who brought correction to people when they were breaking Jewish law. Then we see the two groups of Jewish leaders, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees being people who were wealthy, who were associated with politicians, who were people in power and a lot of them were part of the Sanhedrin and part of the priesthood in the temple. The Pharisees were not for politics, so they were more from the poorer class but they had a lot of power among the people and they also had people in the Sanhedrin and they also had priests among them but a majority of the Pharisees were more scribes. They were more concerned with the teaching of Scripture and the following of Scripture. So I think this is where we stopped last week. So we will look at a few... This is the last group of people that we're going to look at and then we'll go into the next section. So in BC 63, this is... So 63 years before Jesus was born, 63 or 66 years before Jesus was born, the Maccabean rule came to an end. So if we remember, the Maccabees were Jews who had revolted against the Greek rule, the Seleucid Empire. So they rebelled or revolted against the Seleucid Empire because their temple had been desecrated. So the Seleucid, one of the rulers, had actually come into the Jewish temple, had built an altar to Zeus who was a Greek god and had sacrificed a pig there. And the Jews were obviously very offended and they revolted against the empire at this point, led by the family which was the Maccabees. So they begin to rule for 100 years and at the end of the reign, which is BC 63, is when General Pompey, who is a Roman general, comes in and captures Jerusalem. So after this is where the Roman Empire begins and when Jesus is born, Jerusalem and the whole region of Judah is under the Roman reign. So there were Roman deputies, so we hear about them in the New Testament, we hear about Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Philip, Antipae was another Roman deputy. These were people who the Romans had employed as local people to govern over a region. They reported to Roman governors and the Roman governors were Pilate, Felix, Festus and these people were the people who were directly related to the Roman government. So in 86, which is about three years after Jesus was born, this system of Roman deputies kind of lost power and the Roman governors were the main people in power and they appointed publicans also called tax collectors who would collect tax from the Jewish people and give it directly to the Roman governors. So the Jews had to pay taxes to the Romans and the tax collectors were employed by the Roman government Usually the Roman government would employ people who were from a low status background. They were not very rich or very high society, the people who were employed as tax collectors and they were also paid by the Roman government so they received huge sums of money as their wages for the work they were doing but apart from the money they were receiving from the Romans they were also taking extra money from the Jews. So this is why the Jews dislike the tax collectors not only were they working for the Roman government and taking money from their own people they were also taking more money than they should be taking they were taking extra money from the Jews so they viewed them as people who had betrayed their own betrayed their brothers and sisters and who were working for the enemy who was the Roman government. And the opposite side of this group of people the publicans or tax collectors were the zealots. Now the zealots or patriots were people who were very loyal to the Jewish nation. So from a more political point of view they were very patriotic and they wanted to come against the Roman government they wanted to overthrow the Roman government or the Roman rule in their land. So they were almost like a small political party and they were always looking for opportunities to get rid of the Roman rule. So in AD 66 is when they revolted against the Roman Empire and there was a lot of death a lot of violence involved in this revolt but for four years that battle continued and finally Rome reasserted themselves destroyed the whole city of Jerusalem destroyed the temple and the whole city was left in ruins in AD 70. So one thing we can see among Jesus' 12 disciples is that there was a tax collector as well as a zealot in his 12 disciples. We read about Simon the zealot and we know that Matthew was a tax collector. So we see that Jesus in choosing his disciples had a very very diverse group of people. The zealots were completely against the tax collectors but somehow they could work together under Jesus being their leader. So just a beautiful thing to see how in that small group of people there was such a great diversity as well. So with that we come to the end of people groups and now we look at sacred places and sacred writings that are mentioned in the New Testament. So we look at some of the things that we need to know about these places. So the Jewish synagogue, we talked about this right when the Jews went into exile in Babylon they started to learn the law just to preserve their culture because they were in exile. They didn't have the temple to go and worship in. The only way for them to continue to preserve their identity as a Jewish people that was different from the other people around them was to look at their scriptures. And so the law began to be emphasized where they were teaching more of the law to the people. And so we see this in Ezra and Nehemiah where the law is read out to the people and the people respond to it. When they return this is when Cyrus comes into power that's the Persian rule and he sends them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. When people start to settle in Jerusalem and settle in other parts of Judah and as they settle in other parts of Judah they start to form communities that came together to worship, to pray, to fellowship to learn the scriptures together and that led to the formation of synagogues local synagogues in different places. So apart from the temple in Jerusalem which was the main place where sacrifices and worship happened where the priesthood was leading there were local synagogues that were led by scribes. So the scribes were not necessarily part of the priestly class. There were people who were teaching the scriptures to the local people. And so we see that those leaders started to be called elders. So they were elders in that they had good knowledge of the scriptures but they were also people who were looked at to lead the people, the Jewish people because of their place of authority. And among all the elders there was a chief ruler for the elders for each synagogue. And the elders actually had a lot of power so they had power to punish people who had done something wrong they could also ask people to leave the synagogue if they were not happy with something they had done. And we see that that synagogue kind of lays the framework for the starting of churches in the New Testament. That local gathering of believers which was not there in Judaism before now starts to be something that is used and the way the church both spreads but also the way the church operates. So that's why we see elders in the New Testament. We see elders in the church and we see that local gathering of believers. So this is based on the synagogue system that was set up during the Persian rule. Sacred writings. So we see the Hebrew Bible. So how did the Hebrew Bible come into being? So when we look at the Samaritans and Hebrews the Samaritans were actually originally part of the Hebrew people, right? But when they separated and they were exiled and they came back they started to worship in Mount Gerizim and when they started to worship on Mount Gerizim they viewed that as the true place of worship. So someone can just read Deuteronomy 2712 and someone else John 420. Deuteronomy 2712 When you have crossed over the Jordan these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people. Simeon, Levi, Judah, Isachar, Joseph and Benjamin. Thank you. So we see here when they were going to cross the Jordan that Mount Gerizim is mentioned and so the Samaritans took this passage and said that Mount Gerizim was the true place of worship. So they were also trying to oppose the Jewish form of religion and the Jews believed that Jerusalem was the only place of worship but obviously they didn't have access to Jerusalem so they had to have their own place of worship and Mount Gerizim became that place. John 420, if someone can read that. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Yes. So here we see that dispute where the Samaritan woman is talking about that. The Jews said Jerusalem was the place of worship. The Samaritans said Mount Gerizim is the place of worship. So the Samaritans also selected parts of the Pentateuch as their scriptures. They didn't take the whole scripture as what they would follow. They only chose the Law of Moses. They believed that the Law of Moses was the only true teaching and that Moses was God's only prophet. So these were some of the things that defined the faith that the Samaritans were following. So as the Samaritans established their set of scriptures it was always the question that the Samaritans posed to the Jews of what is your scripture? Because the Jews had so many sacred writings. They had their scriptures. They had the rabbinical texts which were teachings on the scriptures. They had other literature outside of that. So the Jews had to define for themselves what is the scripture that we are going to call authority or the word of God that is what we will follow. So they had a canonization of the Hebrew Bible like how we have a canonization of the Christian New Testament. The Hebrews had to define what are the books that are going to go into our Hebrew Bible. So they selected the set of books which we also recognize as our Old Testament. So what is in the books is the same but the way the books are organized the order in which the books are arranged is different from the Christian Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible has 24 books versus us which we have 39 books. So the reason why there is a difference in the number of books is that they have a few of their books that are brought together. So all of the prophets the 12 minor prophets are all clubbed into a single book. We look at a little picture that shows us the difference in these books. So this is a little list of the books on both sides. So on the left we see the books of the Hebrew Scriptures and on the right is the books of the Christian Old Testament. So we can see here in the Hebrew Bible that Samuel, Kings, Chronicles are not divided into two books like we have. So we have two books they just have a single book that's clubbed together. For them Ezra and Nehemiah are clubbed into a single book and then their 12 minor prophets are just a single book of prophets. So their books are divided into the whole Scriptures is divided into the Torah, the Neviim which is the prophets and the Ketuvim which is the writings. So within the prophets they have the former and the latter prophets and they have the writings which are all the other books. So it's for short it's called the Tanakh. So Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim so the T-N-K together is called the Tanakh that refers to the Hebrew Scriptures. So whenever Jesus or the Apostles are referring to the Hebrew Scriptures when they are quoting from the Old Testament these are the Scriptures they're quoting from. They're quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures that were there. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures so it was during, so after Alexander the Great the kingdom was divided between Ptolemy and Seleucid and Ptolemy was ruling over this region, the Palestine region in which the Hebrews lived, the Israelites lived and so he authorized the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures because Greek had become the language of the people. So this is called the Septuagint or the LXX which is 70 in Roman numerals and as we talked about there are several traditions. One says that there were six tribes from each of the 12 tribes and that was 72 people who translated so they just rounded off the number to 70 and that's why it's called LXX. Another tradition says that there were 70 translators who translated in 70 days and so it's called the LXX. So when we look in the New Testament a majority of the quotations that are given of the Old Testament are actually taken from the Septuagint. That means they are taken from this Greek translation not the original Hebrew script. So when we see quotations in the New Testament quoting the Old Testament it's this Greek version that they are quoting there. There are also a few books from the Septuagint that are not in the Old Testament and they are also not part of the Hebrew Bible. So this Greek Bible includes one to four Maccabees, it includes Judith, it includes the Psalms of Solomon. All of these books are not in the Hebrew Bible and not in our Old Testament as well. So with that we come to the end of we come to the end of that introduction to the inter-testamental period and we get into the New Testament. So we are going to begin with the Gospels and before we go into the book of Matthew we will just talk about what are the Gospels. Why do we have four books of the Gospels? Why don't we just have one single book or why won't all those four books put into one single book? So the English word Gospels comes from the Greek word, Euangelion. Euangelion means good news. Almost like good news that is too good to be true. That's the kind of meaning it carries. So it was used in larger contexts as well. So we see on Caesar Augustus' birthday it said good news to the world. So that's where we see it outside of scriptures. In the Old Testament good news referred to God's deliverance of his people. So if someone can read Isaiah 52.7 maybe the same person can read these three passages from Isaiah. Can I read sister? Yes please. Isaiah 52.7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news who proclaims peace who brings glad tidings of good things who proclaims salvation who says to Zion your God reigns. Isaiah 49. Yes please go ahead. Oh Zion you who bring good tidings get up into the high mountain oh Jerusalem you who bring good tidings lift up your voice with strength lift it up be not afraid say to the cities of Judah behold your God. Isaiah 61 months the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news good tidings to the poor he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. Thank you so this was the good news that Old Testament scriptures were prophesying about that there would be someone who would come to deliver the people and that would be the good news for the people of Israel. If we can also look at the New Testament 1 Thessalonians 1.5 and Mark 1.1 someone can read those for us. 1 Thessalonians 1.5 For our gospel did not come to you in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake. Thank you and Mark 1.1 Gospel of Mark 1.1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Thank you so the New Testament uses that same language from the Old Testament so the Old Testament pointed to the good news of God's deliverance of God's salvation of his people and then the New Testament picks up on that language from the Old Testament and says this is the good news this is that good news that has been prophesied about in the Old Testament. So when we read the Gospels it's not just a historical account of Jesus' life it is good news that the Gospels are proclaiming that the Gospel writers are proclaiming it's news of a fulfillment of hundreds and thousands of years of the people of Israel waiting for deliverance for God's promised Messiah and that is what is proclaimed here in these books so that's the way we need to look at it and read it as exciting fulfillment of the scriptures of the Old Testament scriptures. So the genre of the Gospel so what do we mean by genre? Genre is it tells us how to read a specific book so when we look at Paul we say these are the epistles of Paul which means it's a letter that he's written to the people so we read it as a letter or if we are reading the Psalms then we look at it as poetic language so there's a lot of use of imagery everything doesn't need to be taken very literally in the Psalms some of the things are more using of pictures using of images so what when we look at the genre it tells us how do we interpret the passages we're looking at how do we understand them? Are they meant to exhort the people? Are they meant to teach the people? Are they meant to correct the people? Are they dependable? Are they historical? Or are they imaginative? Like a novel is a story is it a story that was written from people's imagination? Those are the kinds of things we look at so with the Gospels the genre is there are a few things that we take into perspective as we interpret the Gospels one is that it was historical that the Gospel writers first of all were people who had somehow firsthand witnessed the ministry of Jesus they were either firsthand witnesses or they were close associates with firsthand witnesses so they were getting their information right from the source and they were narrating it for people so it's historical in that it is something that we can depend on it's something that we can trust it's not something from someone's imagination and it's not something that was written just to entertain people it was something that was written to record true facts and true things that had happened okay so when we look at the Gospel let's just turn to Luke chapter one okay I'll just read for us from verse one many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us they used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples having carefully investigated everything from the beginning I also have decided to write a careful account for you most honorable theophilus so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught so Luke one one to four kind of describes for us what a historical book is like right so it is an account of events that were fulfilled something that really took place okay they used eyewitness reports so it was from people who actually witnessed what happened that they recorded it from the early disciples and Luke says I've investigated everything for myself and I've also written this to assure you of the truth of what you've been taught so why is it important for us to recognize that this is a historical book because a lot of challenges come up against scripture in that can we really trust historicity can we trust that what was written was really what happened or is it just some people writing something how do we know that it's true we know that it's true because it was written by first-hand witnesses or people who were closely associated with first-hand witnesses like Luke and it was written so close to Jesus's life and ministry that there were so many people who were still alive who had seen Jesus whether they were opponents or people who were just general observers there were people who were still alive who could have questioned what the gospel said about Jesus so if something was false about Jesus in the gospels people could have easily questioned because they had been alive when Jesus was ministering they had seen what Jesus had done even if they were not disciples of Jesus so we know that these books came out when these people were alive and so it has to be that they whatever was written had to be true because if it was not true people would have not accepted what was written okay does that make sense any questions yes okay okay so the main things that the gospels want to record about Jesus's life is what Jesus said what Jesus did his death on the cross and his resurrection those are the key things that the gospel gospels want to establish historically Jesus said this Jesus did this Jesus died on the cross Jesus rose from the dead these are things that really happened this and if we need first Corinthians 1514 Paul says if Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless and so is your faith so Paul emphasizes here that the resurrection of Christ is so central to the Christian faith that if it is not true then we are all wasting our time right our faith is completely useless we have no hope and so it's very very important that we can trust these accounts to be true trust that the gospels are really true that when they say that Jesus rose from the dead he really rose from the dead the second thing is the gospels are also a narrative so they are not just historical record to say this happened on this date this happened on this date they don't necessarily put things in the same order it happened and if you read the gospels you will see that the stories are interchanged in one gospel they may have one story happened and another story happened but in another gospel they may have that second story put first in the narrative that's because they were not so concerned about putting it in order okay we were more concerned about what they wanted to communicate through the gospel so there is the narrative aspect to the gospels in that they are trying to communicate Jesus's life through story so they are using the stories of people they are using the stories of events that happened and different settings that it happened in different geographical settings different locations that stories happened and all these things are used to communicate the truth that they want to communicate we will also look at the next part about what was each gospel writer trying to communicate so we will see in the gospels even the same stories where different things are being highlighted about the same story because in some story they look at a character from a different perspective or sometimes they will highlight a different event in the story sometimes they will change the story a little bit to show us something different about the person or about what Jesus did or about what Jesus said so all of that is they are using narrative to communicate truth the third thing is that they are also theological in nature that is they want to teach us something about God so when we read the scriptures we can expect that we are going to discover more of who God is Matthew presents Jesus as the promised Messiah and King like we looked at the Old Testament prophesied the good news of God's deliverance so Matthew emphasizes that fulfillment of the good news Mark emphasizes Jesus the Christ Jesus the suffering servant Luke emphasizes the historical account so we see right at the start his introduction that it is something that can be verified by sources his whole goal in this gospel is to give us verifiable information so that we can trust what has been written in this record and John presents Jesus as the pre-existent divine one word so Jesus as the fulfillment of the incarnate word of God now we can also classify the gospels as biographies so what is a biography it's a record of the life of a person to tell us what that person did and to tell us what they accomplished what they achieved and biographies were also obviously very common at that time but this is different from a biography in that it emphasizes not the victories or only the teachings or only the accomplishments of Jesus it also records for us the passion that is the death and resurrection of Christ the death is not something that is that may be considered as a victory for some people but the gospel still record that as central to the message that they communicate so we see the passion and resurrection in all the gospels and through that they are proclaiming the good news of salvation in Jesus so looking at all of those things can we put the gospel into one single genre so what genre can we put the gospel accounts into? the gospels are historical narrative okay historical narrative motivated by the gospel the gospel the gospel the gospel the gospel the gospel the gospel the gospel motivated by theological concerns so the gospel writers through their recording of Jesus's life they wanted to make sure that the historicity of Jesus's life and teaching his death and resurrection was recorded but they also wanted to look at what to those events teach us about who Jesus is what was Jesus's goal and what is salvation really look like for us what kind of salvation Jesus come to give and they were written by people not who were just observers from the outside but people who actually experience the ministry of Jesus personally took part in the life of Jesus and so there are people who transformed personally and share from their personal experience of the gospel of this salvation that came through Jesus so it's really a beautiful combination of taking historicity taking biography taking narrative and combining it with personal experience so when we read the gospels we can see the impact that it had on the lives of the people who actually wrote it it's not just a record like if you read a regular history book it's not just a record of what happened what took place but it's a record of what they experienced what the gospel writers experienced and this is what we can attribute to why there is such a diverse description within the gospels and when we see all these different stories it's written so differently by each writer because each of them experienced it so differently from the other and some people use those differences to say can we really trust that this is historical why did this writer say this and this writer say this but it is because of the fact that each of them wrote with their purposes their goals for writing the gospel in mind and also wrote from their experiences of what had happened I've heard it this is one thing that I'm not sure about the source of it but they were talking about how when you look at eye witness accounts if an eye witness if there are eye witnesses and all of them have the exact same description of an event you actually question whether these are true eye witnesses because it seems like they have all agreed on a certain script and they all give the same script but if you look at eye witnesses where there is actually a difference in the way they describe an event but the core of what they are saying is the same then you can be sure of the truth of it because each of them experiences that same event in a different way and they are describing it from the way they experienced it from the way they observed it and that is the way we look at the gospels that these events took place and each of them were part of it each of them experienced it in a certain way and each of them communicates it the way they experienced it the way it impacted them also according to their goals for what they were they wanted to say through the gospels so we will stop with this for today and we will continue from here on Thursday anyone have any questions or anything they want to share? there are other disciples also who have written gospels which are not recorded in it so there is the gospel of Thomas there is another gospel that I was reading about but I will talk about that on Thursday but the reason why these were taken the way the canon was selected was based on historical whether it proved to be historical whether there was agreement with the other records that were made about Jesus that was one of the things the other things was how close was it to the actual original date of happening now the gospel of Thomas is written much much later so that is one of the reasons why it is not included some of these gospels had extra like they talk about miracles when Jesus was a baby there is no other record of it so there is no way to know did this really happen because there is such great agreement between these books there was a way to say this is true so that is one of the ways in which they decided which books come into the New Testament and which books don't come in any other questions? Just a short thought I was just looking at a few testimonies from some eminent archaeologists scientists and lawyers and these people when they wanted to seek the truth of the gospels many lawyers who have studied sincerely that is pure hearts looking into the scriptures and studying it come to be believers and found it out to be true the same thing with archaeologists digging deep into scripture and looking for archaeological truths they have turned into believers seeing the truth of the scripture scientists looking at it from a scientific perspective have found so much of scientific evidence for the proof of the gospels that even these scientists turned into believers but there is another group of people who have made up their mind predetermined that they will not believe it even if it is true they will turn from it and believe a lie but these people still did remain unbelievers so it is more of a matter of the heart if you seek the truth with all purity in your heart you will find it but if you have made up your mind that I will not believe the truth even if I come to know the truth even God can't help you Thank you Sanjay for sharing that if we are coming with the true desire to know the truth as scripture says if you seek me you will find me when you seek with all your heart right? but if we have our preconceived beliefs and we are just coming to prove those beliefs or we are coming without being open to allow what we find to change what we believe then nothing can change that which is why we truly see that it has to be God's spirit moving and working in us and our openness allowing God's spirit to move in us Thank you for sharing that Sanjay Thank you Erin for being here we will see you on Thursday