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016 | Canon of the Epistles | Understanding the Canon
490 Plays5 years ago
In this episode we discuss the epistles of Paul, John, James, and more! We cover how they came to be used in the church, how early they were used and quoted, and why there was debate surrounding their inclusion. This wraps up our five-part walk through of the canonization of the bible - but wait there’s more! Next week we will discuss the Apocryphal books and the gnostic gospels. Stay tuned!
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
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.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcast Friends. Felicia here. I'm going to be quite honest with you. I'm recording this in my bathing suit. Yes, indeed. I just came inside from hanging out in the kiddie pool with my four-year-old, who may bust through the door at any moment, so I apologize if you hear her in the background. I'm recording in a different room today.
Canonization of Epistles
00:00:51
Speaker
we are moving into a new episode of the canon series talking about the canonization of the epistles. So in this episode, as we talk about the epistles, I want you to keep in mind everything that we discussed regarding the Gospels because that will be an important foundation in this conversation.
00:01:14
Speaker
So while a lot of that information applies just as much to the epistles as it does to the Gospels, we're going to be talking about how the epistles were affirmed as authoritative, the purpose of the epistles, so why they were written, their style, literary style, the sources that they were drawn from, as well as some important dates and church fathers who used and affirmed them.
Criteria for Canonization
00:01:39
Speaker
And all of this is going to point once again to the same standard for canonization that we have had all along. Those early eyewitnesses, specifically apostolic or prophetic, that agree with the whole of the canon, so a consistent narrative,
00:01:57
Speaker
that are enjoying universal acceptance, so in the Old Testament this would be by the Jewish community, in the New Testament this is by the church, and that it's self-authenticating. So it proves through its own material that this is divinely inspired, this is consistent,
00:02:17
Speaker
and it supports itself. And so we're going to see through what we know about the Epistles that this is the case just as much as it was for the Gospels and the entirety of the Old Testament.
00:02:30
Speaker
So, how were the epistles, the letters, affirmed in the New Testament? How did we come to see them as authoritative and as divinely inspired? Well, there's a couple references in scripture that give us a little guidance here. We're going to first look at 2 Thessalonians 3.14, and in this verse, Paul himself basically says this letter has authority.
00:02:55
Speaker
And you need to listen to what I'm saying. He says, if anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. So the contents of this letter were authoritative to Paul. He wasn't writing it thinking, eh, it doesn't really matter if they ignore this. No. If somebody ignores second Thessalonians in the Thessalonian church,
00:03:22
Speaker
It's a big deal. Next we're going to look at 2 Peter 3, 15. We have quoted this several times throughout this series, but I always like to revisit it because it's so interesting to me that Peter was attesting to the authority of Paul and holding Paul's writings to the same level as the Old Testament scriptures. He says,
00:03:44
Speaker
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in his letters that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.
00:04:05
Speaker
So he's saying, look, there's stuff in Paul's letters that it's confusing. People will twist it, they will change it, they will say it means things that it doesn't, but they do this with the other scriptures as well, holding Paul's letters to the level of scripture and its authority.
00:04:22
Speaker
The last passage we're going to look at is 1st Timothy 5 18 and in this verse it's interesting that Paul is writing to Timothy and in writing to him he quotes both the Old Testament and the New
Apostolic Connections and Authority
00:04:38
Speaker
Testament. So at this point Luke's gospel was being written or was yet to be written but he quotes a verse, a
00:04:48
Speaker
a quote from Jesus that ends up in Luke's Gospel. He says in verse 18, for the scripture says, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. That's an Old Testament Deuteronomy quote, and the laborer deserves his wages. That's Luke 10.7.
00:05:04
Speaker
So here we have Paul making this statement that, here's my authority, this is what it's coming from, from the Old Testament and from the New, and we're seeing this New Testament authority coming into play immediately.
00:05:19
Speaker
These particular pieces of literature are deemed authoritative by the early church because, remember what we said, it has to do with early eyewitnesses, but not just eyewitnesses, not just anybody who happened to see Jesus. Apostolic eyewitnesses, a connection to an apostle, someone who was with Jesus, someone who was guaranteed to have known him and be able to transmit his teaching accurately.
00:05:47
Speaker
Another thing we know, and this was talked about in the Gospels episode, is that what was excluded from the canon tells us the criteria. So, for instance, the Gnostic Gospels that were left out of the canon by the church were written much later and had no connection to an apostolic authority. And because of that, they were not allowed to be canonized.
00:06:13
Speaker
So if we see what's being excluded and the reasons for that exclusion, then we can look at what's included and understand the reasons for inclusion as well.
00:06:26
Speaker
So I wanted to give a couple examples of these eyewitnesses, how the books of the New Testament are connected to Christ-commissioned eyewitnesses. That's how Timothy Paul Jones puts it. So we've got a couple obvious ones, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
00:06:44
Speaker
Matthew, Mark, and John were actually the disciples of Jesus, and Mark was a companion of Peter. Luke was a traveling companion of Paul. We see this based on Colossians 4.14 and 2 Timothy 4.11, and he was basing his account off of eyewitness accounts. Then we have Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus.
00:07:13
Speaker
and Philemon, all written by Paul, who is an apostle and a later eyewitness of the risen Lord. So he testifies to this in 1 Corinthians 9.1 and 1 Corinthians 15. So some people say that Paul didn't write all these texts because of variation in writing style, but we have to remember that these were written over the course of 20 years and writing style changes.
00:07:35
Speaker
If you were to go back to the blog posts I wrote 10 years ago, you would see a significant change in how I wrote them, how I argued my points. Everything would be different except for the core truths that I believed then and now. And so the argument of writing style changing when there's still that basic structure that Paul uses, he was an excellent orator and well, not necessarily an orator, but he was an excellent at arguing his case.
00:08:04
Speaker
And we see that consistently across his books. The book of Hebrews was received by early Christians, and we're going to talk about that a little bit in our episode here because it was debated. It's one of the more debated books. It was considered to be written by Paul, though now we have some people who suggested maybe it was written by Luke.
00:08:25
Speaker
But it does mention Timothy in Hebrews 1323. But Origen, one of the early church fathers, mentioned that really nobody only knows. He said God only knows who wrote Hebrews. But the material is consistent with what we have from other inspired works. Then James. This was written by James the Just. He was a relative of Jesus and an eyewitness of the Lord, later recognized as an apostle. This is according to Matthew 13, 1 Corinthians 15, and Galatians 1.
00:08:54
Speaker
First and second Peter, pretty obvious, written by Peter, an apostle of Jesus. First John, written by the apostle John, the disciple who Jesus loved. And then second and third John, also attributed to John the apostle. Now, there is a mention of a possible other eyewitness named John, known as John the Elder. This is mentioned by Papias of Hierapolis in the second century.
00:09:19
Speaker
Jude, also a relative of Jesus, he was an eyewitness of the risen Lord, according to Matthew 13, 55. And then, of course, Revelation was written by John the Apostle as well. There is, again, possibly this connection to another eyewitness named John, John the Elder. But most people attribute first, second, third John in Revelation to John himself, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
00:09:43
Speaker
So these are actual connections to eyewitnesses for all of the New Testament books that we have. And this was so important to the early church. We want to see that these authors or the people who were writing were connected to disciples of Jesus, people who knew the message and could communicate it effectively and accurately so that it could be written down.
00:10:06
Speaker
And we're not going to talk about writing down the epistles in this episode because we covered that process in the previous episode. So if you haven't listened to the Gospels episode, go back and listen to that for more context on this.
00:10:19
Speaker
Okay, so Paul also testifies to himself saying that his epistles were written according to the testimony of eyewitnesses in 1 Corinthians 9-1 and in 15, 8-10. The words of witnesses carried weight even as these epistles were being written. People were trusting the testimonies of these people even as the epistles were being produced by the disciples.
00:10:46
Speaker
How do we know this? Because of
Early Church Recognition and Lists
00:10:49
Speaker
what we see in Acts, specifically, that these eyewitness accounts were important. Acts 1, 21 through 26, 15, 6 through 16, 5, and then in 1 Corinthians 4 through 5, and in 1 Corinthians 9, as well as in Galatians 1. It was important that these eyewitness accounts be linked to the gospel and that the church be trusting people who were trustworthy, right?
00:11:14
Speaker
I want to read to you a quote also from Apias we mentioned just a minute ago because I think this is a really interesting testimony himself he lived around 8110 so very very early again this is less than a hundred years after Jesus ascension he said
00:11:33
Speaker
If anyone who had served the elders came, I asked about their sayings in detail, so the elders are the disciples, what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any of the other of the Lord's followers.
00:11:49
Speaker
they're trying to make that connection to the eyewitnesses. That's what Papayas is saying here, is that if he interacted with these eyewitnesses who knew the disciples, he wanted to get that information accurately. And so this was a connection that was super important.
00:12:05
Speaker
So we might be wondering, so where are the first lists of the epistle seen? How do we know that these are accurate? Well, one of the first lists we have is the Muratorian fragment. This is from the late 2nd century. And a little bit to know about this, it was written in Latin. It's dated to around 190 and likely drawn up in Rome.
00:12:31
Speaker
So it's interesting in this list what it says is that it says some do not accept the Book of Solomon, Wisdom of Solomon, and the Revelation of Peter. It lists all of the books that we have in our current New Testament, but then it says, here's some other ones, but states some do not accept these specific texts. And the writer speaks of a received and general opinion on these books, according to Paul Wegener. So what he's saying is,
00:13:00
Speaker
There was a general opinion in the Church about the books that are in the New Testament, specifically the Epistles, and Wisdom of Solomon and Revelation of Peter were not completely accepted and were eventually wholly rejected as inspired works.
00:13:17
Speaker
He's appealing to the practice of the universal church in this text. And when he says Catholic Church, he means the universal church. So that's Little C Catholic versus Big C Roman Catholic. So this is community accountability. And if you remember way back when we were in the Old Testament, we talked about the importance of community accountability and how that helped them carry this oral tradition and the truths of God generation to generation accurately.
00:13:44
Speaker
And the same is happening here, where there was a community accountability for what epistles were deemed authoritative and what were not. So another thing that Wegener notes is the divergence of opinion noted about the revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon indicates
00:14:03
Speaker
that there was a unanimous view of the other epistles. Everybody accepted them. The church saw them as authoritative. So by saying these are not accepted, once again saying these are excluded by many, he's saying the ones that are included unquestionably are authoritative and accepted according to the church.
00:14:26
Speaker
And that's something that's very important for us to understand as we're looking at these early, early manuscripts dating these lists of books. So another account or list of New Testament epistles is from Eusebius of Caesarea. This is in the early 4th century. We'll see him again in a minute here.
00:14:44
Speaker
and then also in Athanasius's festive letter in AD 367 and some people say that's the first list that we have that tells us you know what that was in the New Testament canon but that's not actually true we have these other lists that did precede that as well as church fathers who were talking about these books long before Athanasius sent out the festal letter with the included list and so 367 kind of
00:15:10
Speaker
sums up what's been discussed so far and then there were several church councils that met to finally confirm this, but we definitely have evidence, sufficient evidence for early lists of New Testament books and we're going to get to those in just a second.
00:15:29
Speaker
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00:15:48
Speaker
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00:16:05
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.
00:16:30
Speaker
I do want to read a quote by Leland Reichen. This is about the purpose of the epistles and I really liked this because I thought it just gave some context to why they were being written.
00:16:47
Speaker
It says, since these are letters, the points argued and stressed are often not those of the greatest importance. They're usually points about which differences of opinion existed. The church is addressed, knew, the author's views of the central facts, these he can take for granted. It is to show them their mistakes in the application of these central facts to their daily life, to help their doubts,
00:17:10
Speaker
he writes. Many of the questions he discusses are those propounded by the perplexed church. He answers the question because it has been raised. I think a great example of this is 1 Corinthians. We have this situation after situation that's specific to the Corinthian church that they knew the central tenets of Christianity but they were messing up how to apply them and live them out and Paul was addressing those issues head on
00:17:34
Speaker
in a loving way, but one of the things that Reichen mentions too is that Greek and Roman letters tended to be very informational and expository and they were very structured. They tended to have an introduction and then a text or body and then a conclusion, kind of like a research paper.
00:17:52
Speaker
Now, these letters are clearly not your standard Greek and Roman. They follow that structure, but they also depart a little bit from the structure because they add a couple parts to the letters. They typically include that introduction, but they also include Thanksgiving, thanks be to God, you know, through Jesus our Lord. And then it moves to the content of the letter. Towards the end, they had exhortations.
00:18:20
Speaker
these could be called or sometimes are called parainicis and these would equip and encourage them in their faith as they're closing the letter. So the closing is the final greetings and final wishes that are left. And so the interesting thing he points out is that this exhortation actually shows a shift in the letter.
00:18:50
Speaker
from doctrine, so just talking about general doctrine and teaching in the body of the letter, to the moral application of that doctrine. And so I'm gonna read to you from Ephesians 4, 25 through 29, which is an example of this exact shift that he's talking about here.
00:19:11
Speaker
Paul writes, Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry, and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so he may have something to share with anyone in need.
00:19:34
Speaker
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for building up as fits the occasion, so that it may give grace to those who hear." Now if you were to back up and look at the previous passages, you would see a more big picture doctrinal teaching that he's giving them. He's talking about being renewed in the spirit of your mind.
00:19:55
Speaker
and being created after the likeness of God and what happens when you give yourself over to the futility of your mind and then he moves and says therefore clear shift here's how you apply what I just said to you and so this is a section of moral commands this exhortation that transitions slowly into the conclusion of the text and so Reichen just made a point that this is an edition that's special to the epistles that's not standard in all Greek
00:20:25
Speaker
and Roman letters and I thought that was pretty fascinating. Another stylistic thing to take into account with the epistles is the literary techniques of the writers. So while they are giving a message and they're getting that message straight to the people that they want to hear it, they also take the time for very poetic language with figurative and proverbial style.
00:20:48
Speaker
This actually could be a carryover from their Hebrew culture, because we've noted throughout the Old Testament that poetry is laced all throughout it, from the narrative sections to the more poetry-type sections like the Psalms. But also Hebrew is a language that's very vivid.
00:21:07
Speaker
it is very physical so it roots its analogies and its metaphors in the physical world and draws these comparisons that really make it very poetic and that influence likely has to do with the interesting amount of poetic language that we see in the epistles so a few examples that i wanted to give you that as a poet myself i started out my writing career as a poet i really appreciate
00:21:36
Speaker
Paul specifically is writing in this, what they call, a wave-like motion. He says, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.
00:21:58
Speaker
very poetic, very beautiful. And you know, this is not an accident. If he wanted to get that point across, he didn't have to say it that way. But he chose to make it this beautiful, what they call highly patterned rhetoric that's both arguing a point, setting up a doctrinal framework while also being just gorgeous language.
00:22:18
Speaker
Okay, moving on to the dates. Many scholars believe that the Apostle Paul's letters were the first to be accepted as canonical. Paul is deemed authoritative according to Galatians 1.1, Ephesians 4.17. Let me see since I have my Bible at Ephesians what we've got here. He says, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
00:22:45
Speaker
If he's testifying in the Lord, he's citing the Lord's authority. He's saying, I have the authority of God to testify this to you. Do not do this. Colossians 1, 25, 2 Thessalonians 3, 6 through 15, which is one of the strongest proofs that he's saying, look, what I'm saying is authoritative and it's from the Lord.
00:23:06
Speaker
But Paul is not the only one who testified to the authority of his words. We also see that early church fathers were testifying to this authority, not just about Paul, but about other writers as well. I'm going to give you a couple examples. So Clement, this is an AD 95.
00:23:26
Speaker
mentioned in a letter to a church that they take up the epistle of the Blessed Paul. It implied that they actually had a letter, as if perhaps they had a physical letter from Paul. Perhaps it was just a copy of another letter that he had, but it was being used as a source of authority.
00:23:43
Speaker
Ignatius, an early 1st century, also knew likely 1 Corinthians by heart. Many scholars think that he had the whole thing memorized based on the things that he was writing and the references he was using. Polycarp, who was a disciple of the Apostle John, quotes the Old Testament and the New Testament authoritatively, repeatedly, many, many times.
00:24:05
Speaker
Now, here's an interesting one. Do you remember when I mentioned Marcion in the last episode? Marcion was the pastor's kid who just was disenfranchised with the God of the Old Testament, didn't like him. So he basically cut the whole Old Testament out and then cut the New Testament down to only 10 letters of Paul. And he considered that canon. This was a huge motivator to really make the canon of scripture concise because Marcion had cut it down so much.
00:24:33
Speaker
But there's an interesting point here that it was the threat of what he did that helped the church see, oh, no, these things actually matter.
Response to Marcion's Canon
00:24:45
Speaker
Like, we do see these as authoritative. And he threw them away. The fact that he took a knife to them means that there was already an accepted group of books that he decided didn't matter.
00:24:58
Speaker
And so he actually helped the church. Ironically, this is often how heresy works. When heresy rises up, it may divide the church, and division is never great, but it results in a stronger church, and it results in a stronger doctrine, and it results in understanding what we're supposed to stand on. And that's what happened here.
00:25:19
Speaker
Another thing that points to the early date of the epistles and the use in the early church is a Gnostic Gospel. So the Gospel of Truth, which is written around AD 140, I believe by Valentinus, this Gnostic Gospel based its content off of New Testament epistle information. So it didn't have original information. It's dated much later than the epistles. It was working off of the epistles to come up with that information.
00:25:47
Speaker
Now, there are some books of the Bible that were questioned. Now, these are Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John and Jude. Most of these were questioned due to authorship. They weren't positive that they were written by who they said they were written by.
00:26:06
Speaker
Eusebius particularly said that Rome questioned Hebrews because Paul may not have written it. And again, Origen said, we don't know. Only God knows who wrote it. But we also see that Hebrews was quoted liberally by the early church fathers and deemed authoritative by them because of the doctrinal content, and it's being consistent with the rest of scripture. So Hebrews 1 through 5 is quoted by Clement in 1 Clement.
00:26:33
Speaker
Justin Martyr quotes it in his Apology. The reference is 12.9. Arrhenius quotes Hebrews, and this is referenced by Eusebius. And some of the earliest citations of 1 John are by Capolykarp himself. He wrote to the Philippians, and it's in chapter 7 of his to the Philippians. Justin Martyr also quoted from 1 John as well did Clement, Origen, and Tertullian.
00:26:59
Speaker
Arrhenius quoted 2 John and Clement commented on 1 Peter, Jude, 1 and 2 John and made a clear distinction between these books and the apocryphal books, which that's coming up next week. You guys are going to be talking all about the apocrypha. So I'm going to read you a little quote that is kind of in conclusion here and I thought was just a really neat way to end because it was a powerful quote from the Miratorian fragment
00:27:29
Speaker
and just a really neat takeaway on the standards for canonosity and how they have been consistent across time. Now, to understand as I'm reading, this fragment is discussing certain books that are considered authoritative and certain books that are not considered authoritative and why they are debated. So I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm going to read a good portion of it. I'm going to start as he's discussing the last of the gospels.
00:27:59
Speaker
The fourth of the Gospels was written by John, one of the disciples. When exhorted by his fellow disciples and bishops, he said, fast with me this day for three days, and what may be revealed to any of us let us relate it to one another. The same night, it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John was to write all things in his own name, and they were all to certify.
00:28:18
Speaker
And therefore, though various ideas are taught in several books of the Gospels, yet it makes no difference to the faith of believers, since by one sovereign spirit all things are declared in all of them concerning the nativity, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation with his disciples and his two comings, the first in lowliness and contempt which has come to pass, the second glorious with royal power which is to come.
00:28:43
Speaker
I want to pause here and explain a little of what he's saying. He's saying that though there are some variations in the accounts in the Gospels, none of these variations make a difference to the faith of the believers or the doctrines of the Gospel. Since, as he says, the sovereign spirit, the Holy Spirit, declared consistently the things concerning the nativity, the birth of Jesus, the passion, the death of Jesus, the resurrection, and
00:29:11
Speaker
his two comings, so the discussion of his future coming, and then his coming to earth. So he's basically saying, look, there will be some differences in these accounts, but nothing that changes your theology.
00:29:24
Speaker
So now we'll continue. What marvel therefore if John so firmly sets forth each statement in his epistles to, saying of himself, what we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears and our hands have handled these things we have written to you. This is 1 John 1, 1 through 4. For so he declares himself not an eyewitness and a hearer only, but a writer of all the marvels of the Lord in order.
00:29:48
Speaker
The Epistles, however, of Paul themselves make plain to those who wish to understand it what epistles were sent by him and from what place or for what cause. For the blessed Apostle Paul himself, following the rule of his predecessor John, writes only by name to seven churches in the following order, to Corinthians the first, to the Ephesians the second, to the Philippians the third, to the Colossians the fourth, to the Galatians the fifth, to the Thessalonians the sixth, to the Romans the seventh.
00:30:14
Speaker
although for the sake of admonition there is a second to the Corinthians and to the Thessalonians, yet one church, capital C, is recognized as spread over the entire world.
00:30:25
Speaker
The epistle of Jude, no doubt, and the couple bearing the name of John are accepted in the Catholic Church, and the wisdom written by the friends of Solomon in his honor. The apocalypse also of John and of Peter only we receive, which some of our friends will not have read in the Church." What he's saying here is that the Church will not read these books publicly and teach from them. Certain parts of the Church do not agree about those books.
00:30:53
Speaker
But the shepherd of Hermos was written quite lately in our times in the city of Rome, while his brother Pius, the bishop, was sitting in the chair of the church of the city of Rome, and therefore it ought indeed to be read, but it cannot, to the end of time, be publicly read in the church to the people, either among the prophets, who are complete in number, or among the apostles.
00:31:13
Speaker
So I read this to you, I know it probably was a little confusing and the language is clunky to listen to, but I read it to you because he's clearly saying, look, we have a connection to these apostolic works. These are authoritative. He's saying certain books should be read publicly and taught from and certain books should not. That's super important.
00:31:35
Speaker
So he's making these distinctions with how to use these books appropriately for the early church. And this is second-century stuff. So this is an awesome look at how the epistles were used, how they were deemed authoritative, the standard of measure that needed to exist. And so we're going to revisit that standard I mentioned at the beginning. And this is, again, from Paul Wegner. He kind of sums it up, but it's not specific to him. This is just what we've talked about the whole time.
00:32:04
Speaker
Apostolic in origin, it agrees with the canon, and the church recognized two canons. They have a Latin word for these. One is Regula fidei, this is canon of faith, and Regula Veritatis, this is the canon of truth. So this is their standard of measure for whether a book could be included in the canon.
00:32:25
Speaker
It must enjoy universal acceptance by the Church, and so that's why these divided books eventually were left out of the canon, and then self-authenticating divine nature. 2 Timothy 3, 16, being breathed out by God with consistent material that does not conflict theologically with the rest of the Bible.
00:32:45
Speaker
So that's what we have on the epistles, you guys. We have talked about the entire Bible. Isn't that super neat? We've covered it, but it's not over yet. We are going to talk about the Apocrypha and the Gnostic Gospels next week. And after that, we're going to start diving into translations, translation processes, and the King James Version. I hope you'll stick with me because now we're getting to the real exciting stuff.
Connecting with Felicia
00:33:13
Speaker
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 FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.