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021 | Canon Q and A | Understanding the Canon
374 Plays5 years ago
In this final episode of the canon series I answer your burning questions on topics I didn't get to during the last ten episodes! We cover things like paraphases and the Passion Translation, the Book of Enoch, chronological order and much more.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
Series Wrap-up and Future Topics
00:00:30
Speaker
Guys, I don't know whether to be excited that we made it through a whole series on the canon or to cry because it's over.
00:00:38
Speaker
Because y'all know I love talking about the history of the Bible. So I'm kind of bummed that I don't have any more episodes to do right now. But the exciting thing is we will have another season. I haven't decided what about quite yet. But based on your interests when you're deciding between season two and season three, I'm thinking we're going to lean toward fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
00:01:03
Speaker
But I've also thought it'd be super fun to do just a whole season of Ask Anything Monday questions, just random episodes. We'll see. But today we are doing some random questions, all your questions from the Ask Anything canon series.
Recommended Reading on Bible Canon
00:01:22
Speaker
So I posted this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and asked you guys, hey, what do you want to know about the canon?
00:01:31
Speaker
And for those of you who had already listened through the series, you still had some follow up questions. And those are the ones that I picked to answer on this episode. If you have questions that aren't answered on this episode, they probably are answered in previous episodes. So if you're hopping in to this last one and haven't listened through the whole series, keep going through the series and you'll likely get your questions answered.
00:01:54
Speaker
So we've got about 10 or 12 to go through here, and I thought we'd just start out with some awesome resources.
00:02:02
Speaker
First question is, any books or websites for further reading on this topic? Yes, I will give you some of the resources I used for my own research and also some additional ones that might be helpful to you. The first is How We Got the Bible by Timothy Paul Jones. This book is written to be very approachable. It's really just well done and I can't think of a better way to say it. It has a lot of illustrations, it has sidebars, it has
00:02:31
Speaker
language that's written in a really approachable way. And it's just phenomenal work. In fact, you could use it to teach your kids about the canon if you wanted to. And you will have heard me reference him and his work throughout the series on the canon.
00:02:48
Speaker
The next book is Evidence for Christianity by Josh McDowell. Josh McDowell is a well-known apologist and this book is jam-packed with footnotes and facts about every question you could ever have about Christianity, but it has a whole section on the authority of Scripture and that could be really helpful to you.
00:03:06
Speaker
Another one is The Journey from Texts to Translations by Paul Wegner. So this one is a textbook and it reads like a textbook. It can be kind of hard to wade through. It's heavy, it's big, the print is very small, but if you're willing to work with it, it really is a fantastic resource.
00:03:27
Speaker
Words of Delight by Leland Reichen. Dr. Reichen has talked about different translation processes and the Bible in general as literature in many different books, but this is the one that I have referenced the most. And it's mainly about the style of the Bible and understanding the different genres as opposed to the history of the Bible. So just be aware that it's a little bit different topic.
00:03:55
Speaker
Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus by Lois Verberg. This is also a very narrative style book, very easy to read that gives you some context into Middle Eastern culture, especially ancient Middle Eastern culture.
00:04:11
Speaker
And then if you want to just read shorter works, I recommend JSTOR Academic Journals. I have access to this because of going to Liberty, so I can access it with my student email still. And if you have gone to college, you probably have access to JSTOR with your student email as well. Otherwise, I think you can buy a membership to access the academic journals.
00:04:35
Speaker
Okay, second question.
North African Church Fathers' Contributions
00:04:37
Speaker
I'd love to hear more about our black church fathers and their role in the canon. So we have actually talked about quite a few of our North African church fathers. Now, before I remind you of their names, I want to clarify that they were not black in the general cultural sense of the word now, the way we would ethnically describe a black person, but they definitely shared the same ethnic background being from North Africa.
00:05:04
Speaker
So the North African fathers were Clement, Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril. They wrote in Greek, but also Cyprian, Tertullian, and Augustine were from North Africa, but they wrote in Latin. So you kind of had the Eastern and the Western fathers based on the languages that they used, but they were both from the same descent, North Africa.
00:05:28
Speaker
They're definitely indigenous peoples of the African continent, and unfortunately, just like what happened with Jesus, medieval painters depicted them as white European men, when they would in fact have been significantly darker in appearance. So these men are all mentioned throughout the entire canon series as having a huge role in the development of the canon and the support of the authority of scripture, as well as the development of Christian thought in the first 400 years.
00:05:59
Speaker
The third question, are there any books that are debated as canon or not still today?
Debate: Apocryphal Books - Protestant vs Catholic
00:06:06
Speaker
So all of the Apocryphal books would still be debated today between Protestants and Catholics. If you listen to the Apocrypha episode, we talked about how Catholics call the Apocryphal books, the Hebrew Apocryphal books, the Deuterocanonical books.
00:06:22
Speaker
Whereas Protestants no longer keep them in their Bible, even though it was in the King James at least up until the late 1800s, we no longer see these books as any kind of canonical. We never did, but we don't keep them in our Bible even for historical reference.
00:06:38
Speaker
though they are good for historical reference. Another debate would probably be about the Gnostic Gospels since they were discovered in the 40s at Nag Hammadi and there are people who think that these bear some kind of authority but no conservative scholar or orthodox theologian would give these any credit because they deny the deity of Christ and they deny other fundamental doctrines of the faith. Fourth question, can you address the amplified bible a little deeper?
00:07:07
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so we didn't touch on this too deeply in the English translations episode, but the Amplified Bible was first published in 1965. It was revised in 1987 and also in 2015. And if you're familiar with it, when you're reading the Amplified Bible, in fact, let me just get my new version up out right now and we'll just look at a passage in the Amplified Bible. Because the way it works is it's kind of expanding on the passage to give
00:07:36
Speaker
more context to what you're reading. I'm in Ezekiel apparently right now, but I'm gonna go to a little bit of an easier book for what we're reading. Okay, so here's John 1. You might remember the passage being, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself, talking about Jesus being the Word. But the Amplified says, in the beginning, in brackets, before all time, was the Word,
00:08:01
Speaker
parentheses Christ and the word was with God and the word was God himself. He was brackets continually existing in the beginning brackets co-eternally with God. And so you see that they're adding in words that are in brackets so they're not originally in the text to give more context to what's going on.
00:08:23
Speaker
Basically, the amplified acts like a functional equivalence Bible. If you don't know what that is, listen to the translation episode, a functional equivalence Bible with the dynamic equivalence in parentheses in the text itself. In some cases, it acts as a study Bible, but the commentary is inserted into the text in parentheses. Instead of reading the notes below or reading footnotes, you are getting it right inside the actual text.
00:08:51
Speaker
So, because of this, it can be helpful, but the parentheses content should be looked at like commentary as opposed to, well, Bible.
00:09:02
Speaker
So it can be a really great resource. It's not a terrible translation in a sense. It's just a good study aid. I wouldn't use it as your primary resource if you are confusing the commentary with the original text.
Why the Book of Enoch is Non-Canonical
00:09:18
Speaker
Okay. If you want to read more about the Amplified Bible, Mark Ward has a really good article on this on Logos.com.
00:09:25
Speaker
Okay, I had three questions about the book of Enoch and whether this book would be canonical, if Christians should be using it, etc.
00:09:36
Speaker
So the book of Minach is more than even an apocryphal book because it's not honored by the Catholic Church in the Deuterocanonical books and it's not honored by the Protestant Church. The book was written in Hebrew originally. It was referenced by Jude and by other church fathers but it was never considered canon by the church due to its errors and due to its mythical nature. A couple concerns with this
00:10:04
Speaker
So it seems to imply, this is in chapter 32, it seems to imply that the Garden of Eden was still in existence after the Flood, which is questionable. In chapter 38, it contradicts Daniel and other prophecies about the Millennial reign.
00:10:19
Speaker
In chapter 40, it talks about plural Satan's, which is different than the Bible, who gives that name to only one fallen angel. It also tends to imply that Satan can't stand in God's presence, which is contrary to what we see in Job. In chapter 41, it implies that the sun and moon move opposite of each other.
00:10:39
Speaker
And in chapter 47, it says that God requires the blood of the saints, which is kind of like, you know, what does that mean? Kind of hard to understand theologically.
Non-Chronological Order of Bible Canon
00:10:49
Speaker
In chapter 51, it says that Shael and Hel will give back to the earth, which isn't scriptural. And also, Hel is a New Testament term, not Old Testament. So that gives us some questions about origins and things like that.
00:11:05
Speaker
Overall, no. The Book of Enoch should not be informing our understanding of scripture. The scripture should be informing our view of the Book of Enoch. So we want to be sure that we're getting those two things straight. It doesn't mean you can't ever read it or explore it as an extra-biblical text, but I definitely wouldn't use it as something that you're using to inform your understanding of scripture.
00:11:28
Speaker
The next question is, what was the process of choosing the canon order? Why not chronological? So if you remember from the first few episodes of this season, the Hebrew Bible was originally compiled according to literary type. You had the three sections of the Torah, the prophets, and the writings, Tanakh. And when these were converted from scroll to codex because of the Greek influence, they were rearranged into a somewhat chronological order.
00:11:54
Speaker
Remember, the Hebrew Bible used to end in Chronicles, and that was rearranged. So the New Testament, after the Old Testament had been rearranged, was compiled also in a somewhat chronological order, in that we see the Gospels, then Acts, and then the Epistles ending with the Revelation of John.
00:12:12
Speaker
So it really is in a somewhat chronological order, but they weren't striving for chronological order at the time of the compilation. Like they weren't thinking about that. And remember, they would have known the history of what happened much better than we do today. So we need that help of having it in chronological order, but there's a good chance that they did not. Why does God leave it up to humans to canonize rather than directly command content? That is our next.
00:12:42
Speaker
So if we look at the history of the Bible honestly, we see that God did command content. Any time you see the word of the Lord came to me or the Lord spoke or said or the Lord said write this down, this is God commanding content to be communicated and written down. So also remember as we talked about in the canon of the Gospels, these were oral cultures. We discussed this in the Torah canonization section as well.
00:13:07
Speaker
and so things were handed down orderly and then eventually it was seen hey we need to write this down we need to confirm this so that we don't lose track of this and make sure this information is correct. Also remember that humans have free will given by God and they can use that will to reject what God has inspired us as word. The church fathers simply canonized what God had already communicated and commanded.
00:13:30
Speaker
And I say canonized in quotes because it was already canon because God said it was. The church fathers just collected it and then affirmed what God had said. They didn't give God's word authority. It already possessed it inherently. They just recognized that it had that authority.
00:13:48
Speaker
So there will still be people who don't accept canonization. They write it off as human approval. But to do that, you kind of have to ignore the unique content and approach to humanity and the divine. Remember, Christianity is the only religion where God reaches man instead of man reaching God.
00:14:04
Speaker
and gives us this consistent narrative about that process. And secondly, you have to ignore its historical roots and the progressive canonization how it continued to be affirmed as authoritative over time and in multiple cultures with different authors even though the narrative was consistent. So God used man to do this.
00:14:26
Speaker
because he works within history. He works with humanity. He could have dropped it from the sky randomly. He could have, you know, secretly like we hear with the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith without accountability, but he didn't do that. And he chose to utilize mankind as a living testimony to his word.
00:14:45
Speaker
I think all of us have been at a women's conference where we were told, you are a beautiful daughter of the Most High King. And it's true. But it's not the whole truth. The beauty of being God's daughter has some backstory and it's left out in a lot of messages preached to women.
00:15:04
Speaker
So if you're tired of hearing the watered down Christian teaching and you're hungry for a deeper spiritual life, I have something for you. It's my brand new book, Stop Calling Me Beautiful, Finding Soul Deep Strength in a Skin Deep World. Stop Calling Me Beautiful is a book about going deeper with God.
00:15:22
Speaker
I'm going to talk about pursuing the truths of who God is and who we are in relationship to Him, how to study Scripture, how legalism, shallow theology, and false teaching keep us from living boldly as a woman of the Word. I'm so excited to put this book in your hands. You can grab your copy on Amazon, or for more information, head to my website, FeliciaMasonheimer.com, and click the Book tab.
00:15:47
Speaker
Okay, next question is, I just heard that Ezekiel was only for men over 30. I would love to hear more about this. So I did some research into this. I didn't find a lot of evidence of it. I'm going to ask in our Messianic Jewish Bible study and see if I can find out some more.
00:16:04
Speaker
As far as I know right now, I didn't see a whole lot of information confirming this from the Jewish sources that I follow. We do know that Ezekiel was hotly debated by Jewish scholars for canonization because of its mystical nature and because of some of Ezekiel's prophecies that seemed to pit the individual against the nation. Like they weren't consistent with the collective nature of Hebrew literature. But obviously they eventually came to the conclusion that it was consistent and they canonized it.
00:16:34
Speaker
The only source I found regarding Men Over 30 being permitted to read Ezekiel was a secular Jewish site that said it was because the rabbis didn't like strong women. So I don't know. If this was a practice, very likely it was probably similar in motive to Song of Songs. The content is very sexually explicit in Ezekiel and so it's very likely that that was why they would restrict women and younger men from reading it.
00:17:03
Speaker
Next question is, what questions are helpful to ask when choosing a translation? I love this. So a few things that I would suggest asking are, what is the translation style? Is it a functional translation? Or is it a dynamic translation? Is this a paraphrase? And I did not get into this in the translation episode, but this kind of ties into another question that I'll answer after this about paraphrases. But you want to be knowing, okay, what was the goal?
00:17:31
Speaker
of this translation, like what were they trying to do word for word or phrase for phrase. Another thing to ask is, was this committee based or was it a soul translation? So like the message was translated into quote unquote modern language by Eugene Peterson by himself versus a committee based translation.
00:17:51
Speaker
And then finally, this is kind of superficial, but are you looking for note taking space, study notes? If you're looking for study notes, what denominational approach are you looking for? So for instance, the MacArthur Study Bible is going to have very strong Calvinist notes. The Life in the Spirit Study Bible is going to have more Pentecostal assemblies of God leaning notes. So depending on the study Bible that you have, they're going to interpret passages differently in their commentary. So keep that in mind as well.
00:18:22
Speaker
Okay, what about paraphrases? What's the deal with like the passion and the message? So the message was translated by Eugene Peterson from Hebrew and Greek into the modern language.
00:18:33
Speaker
People often consider this a paraphrase because the language is so loosely translated. It's like the phrase for phrase of phrase for phrase, the most dynamic translation as in, again, go back and listen to the English translations episode. He was taking a lot of liberties with the word for word text.
00:18:53
Speaker
in order to express a concept in modern language and that means that you know things are lost when you do that. I do own a message bible sometimes I read it just to get a different perspective or voice but I definitely wouldn't recommend studying out of it.
00:19:08
Speaker
Now, as for the passion translation, this is not a translation at all. And there's actually quite a few concerning things with the passion, mainly because once again, this is a singular person who did this. We know that the author also lied about his translation background with New Tribe's missions, which is concerning.
00:19:27
Speaker
And further, he changed a lot of the language in this Bible to reflect charismatic new apostolic reformation theology. So there's not always something wrong with that. I come from a charismatic Assemblies of God background myself.
00:19:44
Speaker
I still am a continuationist and still believe in spiritual gifts, but there is a problem when you're reading that into a text when it's not there. So Kingdom Now theology or references to anointing when anointing wasn't the word that was used are all very concerning in the Passion Translation and so I can't recommend it as a resource. Mike Winger also has a really great video on this. He's one of the most gracious, kind, apologetic
00:20:11
Speaker
teachers out there and he does a really fair assessment of the passion quote-unquote translation. Who made, this is the next question, who made the chapters and verses? So I failed to talk about this in any of our episodes, I think I mentioned it in passing, but Stephen Langton in 1205 AD divided the Vulgate, so remember this is the Latin Bible into chapters.
00:20:38
Speaker
And then after him, Robert Etienne, or Stephanus, that was his monk name, divided it into verses. So the first Bible to use this chapter and verse division was the Geneva Bible. Okay, last question. Well, actually, there's two more questions.
What is the Red Letter Movement?
00:20:56
Speaker
I'll do this one, and then I'll do our final question. Can you talk more about why Jesus's words are or aren't more important than the whole Bible?
00:21:04
Speaker
Okay, this is relevant because there is a movement in Christianity called the Red Letter Movement and basically they believe that they don't need any other part of the Bible except Jesus' words.
00:21:16
Speaker
And quite frankly, this is modern Marcianism. If you remember, we talked about Marcian at one point in the series, and he's the guy who was the pastor's son, kind of disconcerted with the Old Testament God, didn't like him, he seemed like a different God. And so he chopped the Old Testament out of the Bible, and he took out everything but 11 epistles, or 10 epistles in one gospel, because he felt like those were the most consistent with the God of Jesus.
00:21:45
Speaker
So modern Marcinism does this by saying only Jesus' words matter and nothing else matters. Problem with that is Jesus himself quoted the Old Testament and said he fulfilled the Old Testament. He used it as his source of authority. He said that nothing in the Old Testament would pass away but would be fulfilled in him. And so
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, without the prophecy and narrative that came before Jesus, honestly, we know nothing about who Jesus was or why he came or what his purpose was.
00:22:18
Speaker
Further, Jesus affirmed the inspiration of the scriptures, and he quoted them authoritatively. His ministry and work were in that context. And when he ascended, he left the command to go and do what Paul and the apostles did, the Great Commission. And so their records of that process give us tangible examples of what life in Christ looks like. We basically get the starter pack of, here's what Christianity is going to look like right out of the gate doing what Jesus said to do.
00:22:47
Speaker
Usually, the argument that Jesus' words are all that matter are used to get around difficult passages in Scripture or to say that Jesus did not uphold the Levitical sexual ethic. It usually revolves around the sexual ethic, unfortunately, and saying, well, Jesus never specifically condemned certain practices, and so, you know, we can affirm what we want to affirm.
00:23:09
Speaker
And the reality is that in upholding the Old Testament, Jesus upheld the Old Testament sexual ethic too and affirmed that definition of marriage. And so it's uncomfortable, but it's the truth. Okay. The last question is, can you do, and I had a couple of things like this. Can you sum up the Apocrypha in one sentence? Can you do canon in a nutshell or like a one to two minute defense of the canon for us? And here's why I'm not going to do that for you.
00:23:40
Speaker
I want you to listen through this information, to distill it down, to take it in, and to be able to communicate it back in your words to your people. See, that's what I'm trying to do here through this podcast for you. And now I need you to go do it for the people who are listening to your voice, because there's a lot of people who will never hear of Felicia Masonheimer. They will never listen to this podcast, but they will listen to you.
00:24:08
Speaker
One of the issues we have today is Christians being unable to articulate their beliefs well. And if I were to just give you a script to say, your person you're talking to would have a follow-up question, and then how would you answer that? That's why you have to distill this information down. You have to own it. It has to be part of who you are, part of what you know, so that you can have actual conversations with people and not just scripted answers that I gave you.
Personalizing and Articulating Beliefs
00:24:36
Speaker
And so I know that's challenging and that's hard and it'd be really easy if I did give you a script. But what this means is you get to dig in, you get to know the truth, you get to learn how to best present it to the people in your life. And that will be more empowering for the gospel than anything that I could have written on your behalf.
00:24:55
Speaker
Okay, guys, man, this has been so fun. I hope you've loved this series. I hope you share it and that it becomes an awesome resource for people who ask you questions and want to know about the history of Scripture and the Bible. And I hope it gets you excited about the Bible that you hold. The next time you sit down with it and you open it, you can think, oh my goodness,
00:25:14
Speaker
This is the work of Ezekiel. This is the work of Moses. This is the work of Paul. This is the work of Tyndale and Stephanus and Wycliffe and every other Christian who came before me to get this into my hand so I could sit here in my armchair today and know the God of the Bible. That's pretty amazing.
00:25:37
Speaker
Thanks for joining me for this series and I will be back in your earbuds in a couple of weeks. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit Felicia Masonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.