Transcript

Lost Bible: The Didache

(00:04) our topic tonight is one of the Lost Books of the Bible one of the books that didn't make it into the New Testament Canon and indeed what I would usually think of as maybe maybe one of the most the earliest books that we still have or that we have again that didn't make it in and maybe in my book anyway the second most important New Testament book that got left out of the New Testament after the sayings Gospel of Thomas this is a book that is usually called the dedicay which is Greek for the teachings so the teachings of the 12 apostles as sometimes

(00:45) sometimes called so there are lots of books um that are let's say missing from the New Testament both in terms of books that actually were written and maybe books that people would like to have so the New Testament as canonized as we have it now consists of four Gospels where gospel is its own kind of interesting genre of text sometimes people read these as if they were say a biography or a history of Jesus but they aren't really because for one thing in general they really only cover uh just a couple years of

(01:28) Jesus's life and in fact like a third of the text in each of the cases is devoted to essentially the last week of Jesus's life the earliest of these gospels the one that is now called The Gospel of Mark does not even have any kind of um let's say anything that happened before Jesus's baptism whereas the gospels of Matthew and Luke include very brief non-historical Nativity stories that are added into it but in any event that doesn't make them biographies in any sense nor are they eyewitness accounts or history books rather their theological books that are attempting to tell the sacred story of Jesus ministry

(02:09) as understood by second and third Century I'm sorry second and third generation early late first century Christians stories of the good news as understood by the Christian the emerging Christian tradition so in addition to those four gospels there's a book of Acts which is essentially a stories about how early Christians anyway understood the early church to have grown out of a movement that surrounded immediately the Jesus to a a movement that was spread kind of across the Roman Empire in tiny congregations and especially the cities of the Greek speaking East

(02:49) the book of Acts is also written by the same author as the author of The Gospel of Luke and so it's actually the second half of that text in addition to those five books then there are 21 letters on a variety of topics and the letters can be are pretty random and so um one of them is simply kind of a a page-long letter that Paul writes to someone he knows about a a guy who maybe perhaps is a runaway slave and he wants uh essentially kind of is kind of guilting this guy into giving him back to or giving him his freedom and letting

(03:29) him come back and help out Paul with his work and so forth in other words it's kind of a an odd book to even have made it into uh the New Testament and there's a bunch of them that are a little bit strange like that and then at the end with the um uh there is a book about a vision of the end of the world the Book of Revelation so there's one apocalypse that's added but in that whole set of contexts one of the things that the New Testament does not have that I think may be many early Christians would have wanted and indeed people have probably wanted in Christian history ever since is let's

(04:03) say a rule book or an administrator's guide or something like that how do you run a church what are some of the things that you do in order to have a church and so forth that doesn't actually exist so by the time the texts of the New Testament are written it's clear from the context for example especially in the letters the letters of Paul being the earliest writings that Christians are already now existing in small groups or congregations like I say spread across the cities and towns of the Roman Empire especially in the greek-speaking East but already all extended as far away as Rome itself so

(04:43) in other words in the Latin West as well as I say none of the texts provide basic instructions though for how do you have a Sunday worship or are you supposed to be meeting on Sunday and so forth what are what are the things that you're supposed to do to be Christians how should the groups decide who's in charge what are the different jobs in the congregation who who do you pick them what are the descriptions what are the people supposed to do and so forth rather than having some kind of a proactive user's manual or something

(05:12) like that the most prolific of our early authors and the first of the authors Paul is actually when he's writing to these groups he's primarily reacting to problems so in a lot of cases either they've written him a congregation has written him a letter or maybe they've sent Messengers to him and he is writing a letter in response so you can get a sense if by kind of reading into what he's saying what their problems are and he's kind of giving answers that give you some of these details of how you should run a church or how Paul thinks you should anyway but there isn't like a Proactive or a a positive way where

(05:53) you're just setting out those kind of rules at least that exist in the New Testament Canon and so for example this is something that was lacking for Protestants so when the Protestant Reformation happens when the northern uh and Western Latin church there's a division between uh in Latin Christendom between people who stayed and remained loyal to the church in Rome the papacy and all of the reformers who ended up breaking away into Lutheranism and anglicanism and so forth one of the things that the Protestants did was reject

(06:31) other sources of authority like tradition or like the apostolic succession the idea that Bishops had been appointing Bishops who'd been appointing Bishops that go all the way back to the apostles and so forth or even frankly the mediating writings of the earliest Christians the so-called Church fathers in other words because the Protestants wanted to focus as a sole source of authority on the biblical text itself and not have that unmediated so they don't care what origin or Clement or Augustine had to say necessarily about the New Testament texts because they

(07:13) were going to interpret them themselves and everyone should because that's you're gonna have a brand new religion focused it's not a new understanding of Christianity which is to say one so amazingly focused on Bible text that wouldn't have been the case any time before that time period that modern time it's now for Christians that has been so Central for in the last many centuries because of the Protestants people just think that bible-based or Bible focus is what Christianity is but that is a new thing and because there are all of these gaps in the New Testament like I say there's

(07:50) no manual for how you run a church that's one of the reasons why protestantism is ultimately divided into so many denominations it's because the texts allow for different interpretations and so how should you be running these things should we have Bishops should the Bishops be in charge of different things or are Bishops something we don't need and instead we should have like a council should should people be electing presbyters to synods and so forth there's all of these different kinds of governance questions that are not really

(08:23) laid out in the New Testament Canon and as a result like I say lutherans and methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians and so forth all have different interpretations based on the text that kind of a sectarian Division and divide was one of the things that for example early in the early American Republic in the 1820s Joseph Smith was struggling with he was you know had for a while kind of looked at joining the methodists and some of these other churches and so forth and one of his Solutions in beginning and composing and creating new scripture like the Book of Mormon part of the goal of that text or one of the

(09:10) things that that text does is fill in answers that Protestants couldn't find in the Bible so there was a new scripture that provided new authoritative or scripturally authoritative answers so for example this is just I'm not going to talk about this it's just a diversion it's not about the Book of Mormon but I'll just mention it here so by the end of the composition process as Joseph Smith is dictating The Book of Mormon and his scribe Oliver cowdery is writing it down while they're getting to the end of the process of composing the text they've already decided that they're going to be founding a new

(09:46) church the Church of Christ the church that ultimately becomes Community of Christ and also the rest of the Latter-Day Saint tradition of churches Mormon church and so forth so in their text then as you get to the end you get to the book of Moroni the last book not the last book composed but the last book in the text it suddenly filled with all of these rules for how do you run a church you know these are questions that they're thinking about because they're about to start a church and so these rules include right away they get oh here's the text for the communion prayers it's the same same

(10:18) text that we still read once a month in we did a couple months a couple weeks ago here in the congregation when we have a convenience service it lists the priesthood officers as they understood it in 1830 so they talk about the elders priests and teachers in other words all of these things start existing as a more like I say a rule book of how to have a church or found a church or run a church and so forth so early Christians you know in the first century uh A.

(10:49) D also saw the need for rules so example how should we be performing sacraments what was what are the priesthood roles and they produced texts on this topic so this creates a genre of text known as ancient Church orders so that's just what the genre is kind of called but essentially Rule books or handbooks for how do you uh how do you be a Christian or how do you have a Christian congregation the earliest then surviving text of this genre a church order is the dedicate which may include components that date all the way back to the mid first century so maybe even among the earliest uh nevertheless like I say the dedicate

(11:29) is not included in the New Testament Canon so it may preserve some of the earliest Christian writings that didn't get canonized so let's look at how the Canon works and what's in the New Testament and what didn't make it as we are considering some of these and in this case one particular lost New Testament book so although the New Testament is usually published as a single book and it's often published that's the same book with the Old Testament so the Bible is one of the most commonly ever since the

(12:02) invention of the published printing press is one of the um I guess it's the most printed book ever it's a big long book and in some cases because um for a whole long time in English the most likely or the most commonly printed one is the King James version which is this kind of old-timey Shakespeare italki version it makes it seem like it's all written in one voice as if it was all written at the same time one author one single book and so forth but actually the New Testament is in fact made up of multiple texts written by multiple authors at different times with different perspectives with competing

(12:41) viewpoints viewpoints where they don't agree with each other in some cases viewpoints where they are actually at majorly angry at each other and and disagree with each other and certainly where they contradict one another directly but in addition to all of those texts that made it into the Bible there are the same number or actually more uh texts that did not make it in even though they are very very similar to the ones that were included so in some sense the um and in some cases the decisions of which one that goes in or not is almost

(13:17) haphazard and arbitrary as we will sort of see so the books that did make it in this is essentially how we look at it in kind of a a graph or a pie graph in terms of by length and so you can kind of see the um the gospels themselves as kind of going around the circle of this clock from 12 to almost six are the uh are kind of a bulk of the texts the gospel is now attributed to Matthew Mark Luke and John Mark being the oldest of those and John being the newest in addition to that the book of The Acts of the Apostles which is also long

(13:59) and so you can kind of see here because Luke and Acts of the Apostles have the same author that author is one of the most uh prolific authors in the New Testament Canon because a greater percentage of the text is written by that author then we have all of these letters and so here in yellow and gold and orange are the letters that are attributed to Paul and I have on the yellow ones essentially the ones that most Scholars think are authentic Lee Paul the gold ones here are ones that Scholars think maybe Paul or some Scholars think could be Paul and the

(14:36) orange ones ones that are very unlikely to be Paul although some people hold out hope and then in addition to that there's just a little bit of a miscellany you can see in that kind of time period from 10 a 10 p.m all the way to midnight which is the biggest one there is the anonymous letter to the Hebrews it kind of got into the Canon because some people thought maybe Paul wrote it it's good that it made it in it's actually a really a very thoughtful text by an important early Christian thinker who's not Paul not anybody else but

(15:06) anyway we don't know who it is but anyway somebody who has a very interesting way of thinking and then the letter of James the letters uh attributed to James anyway the letters that pretend they're Peter pseudo-peter the letters of John the world to be talking about Jude and then finally revelation and like I say even though sometimes Christians conflate the person who actually the many authors who wrote the Gospel of John with the author of the book of Revelation and the author of the letters three letters attributed to John those are in fact not by the same authors

(15:45) we'll look at that next week so like I say in terms of types we have four gospels one book of Acts 21 letters and one apocalypse no church manuals in terms of how to make a church and so forth so how did we get that Canon so the Canon is not something that people went out to start writing nobody had a committee at the beginning Jesus didn't say he didn't start writing anything and in fact we have no writings from Jesus he didn't decide to his Apostles I want you to make a new Bible start writing or anything like that rather it's a thing that took centuries

(16:30) to do and it's an assembly of books that were not written to be part of a Bible or were not written to be scriptures um we had a a quotation by Paul a couple weeks ago where we say I've told you all of this that Jesus died according to the scriptures he was raised he came again according to scriptures and so forth and somebody emailed me and said wait a second what does Paul mean by scriptures if he is writing before any of the other texts of the New Testament are written he obviously does not mean the New Testament he doesn't mean the Bible the way we have it and that's exactly the

(17:07) case so Paul when he's talking about scriptures and all that kind of thing anybody in the New Testament is talking about scriptures if Jesus is talking about scriptures and so on they are not talking about the Bible the way we have it they are actually specifically talking about the Hebrew Bible what Christians call the Old Testament and specifically they're talking about the Hebrew Bible as it was translated into Greek the Septuagint translation and so um the Canon of the New Testament took centuries to become fixed so the

(17:42) very earliest Canon that exists is actually created by a guy who we've talked about when we talked about lost Christianity is a man named marcion who is a church leader in the second century but a church leader of a group that does not win so it's a it becomes what we think what the rest of Christians the Christian tradition that won the proto-orthodox tradition calls Heretics the martianites marcian uh created a Canon of just 11 books specifically focused and he actually rejected the whole Old Testament and so forth It's focused essentially just on

(18:22) Paul's letters and and most of the Gospel of Luke but deleting some of the Gospel of Luke because marcian as we've talked about anyway believed that the god of the Hebrew Bible is an evil God and so forth and as opposed to that kind of thing you wanted to eliminate Christianity's um Jewish roots effectively so anyway once he had this idea of a Canon though well then other people who are in the mainline church or what becomes the main law in the proto-orthodox group they start saying well that's a good thing we should start saying which of the which of these books

(18:56) are actually ones that we are are valid and that we should use and so forth however even in all the different lists the lists are quite variable until we get to the year 367. so that is the first time that the final list of 27 books appear without any other books or so on in other words without you know so in other words not all of the books made it in the list and some lists and so forth but by the time we get to this letter by Bishop athanasius of Alexandria he says these are the books that I consider to be uh canonical or

(19:32) that these should be what should be part of Christian scripture few years after that or a generation after that Augustine is some very important Latin thinker so the most important early Church Father in the Latin speaking church at a synod in hippo he's the bishop of Hippo which is in North Africa Algeria Tunisia area in 393 he led that and councils of Carthage and they accepted those 27 books as the Canon and so that canonized it So based on what Augustine is running around doing Down in Africa the Pope

(20:11) commissions a translation of those 27 books he has Saint Jerome translate those into Latin what's called The Vulgate because it's a type of Latin the common Latin vulgar means common and that helps to fix the canon in the Latin West and so that's gets us to the end of the fourth Century before we're really even having a Canon so the Eastern Church ends up agreeing with that list by the time you get to the fifth century essentially The Book of Revelation was the very last book to be universally accepted so that almost didn't make it into the Canon

(20:50) so the Canon therefore if we kind of look at maybe when they were composed all of these different texts the Canon collects those and so some of those are like the letters the earliest letters of Paul as we always look back to are happening in the 50s and there are the um the later letters that are attributed to Paul um and and I'm dating them in my case by saying they probably aren't written by Paul and so therefore they're later than usually think and also you can kind of see some of these other letters James and Jude and Peter and Peter and so forth when the gospels are kind of coming in and

(21:27) Revelation and John so nevertheless there are a bunch of other texts that are kind of left out including ones that are fairly early um so one of the ones that are are showing up on this early especially are I'm listening here I'm kind of having them as hexagonal ones I'm making little those little hexagonal green ones there as kind of texts that are maybe theoretical or lost that we don't have um um but are maybe earliest versions right and so I have here maybe Q so Q could theoretically be the earliest

(22:05) gospel this lost sayings gospel and maybe there is a very early version of Thomas it's not the Thomas that we have now which you can kind of see on this chart is maybe composed or compiled or re-edited all the way to the point in the early let's say 120s but it may be there's an earlier component of it likewise that could be true for the Decay which is to say there is maybe an early components of this text that are let's say from the 60s or so and then maybe the collection as we have it now is again kind of uh composed or added together and made into this text

(22:41) that we have maybe by the beginning of the second century that kind of a thing um and then there's a bunch of these other texts and we've had lectures on some of these and we'll talk continue to talk more about them as they've fit in so for example the I listed there as another early one the signs potential science gospel that's a hypothetical source for what then becomes the Gospel of John so just as an example so these are Letters by Paul and letters attributed to Paul and so in terms of order of maybe when

(23:21) they were written beginning with Thessalonians and Galatians First Corinthians and so forth but one of the things that we might note if you read Paul's first letter to the Corinthians at a certain point Paul says in my previous letter to you I said this or that and so um you know one thing we can say then about the First Corinthians is that's not the first letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians so there's presumably an earlier letter to Corinthians which is a lost previous letter and so I'm listing that as being older than the ones that

(23:53) we have and then again those are the authentic ones in yellow the ones that may be authentic and the ones that probably aren't authentic and kind of red and then in purple we have ones that definitely aren't authentic but are also many early Christians sort of uh you know attributed to Paul and and read and popularized and so for example there's a really kind of a an exciting um uh Hellenistic romance almost or the actions thriller story called The Acts of Paul and thecla which is really quite popularized and Paul's missionary companion thecla is a female Apostle who

(24:39) has all kinds of Adventures she like self-baptizes herself and and even though again this is not historical and this is definitely not legitimately it's not part of the Bible and it isn't like I say historical nevertheless thekla is a saint for example in the Easter Church she has a shrine there's all these kinds of ideas about her even though these texts didn't make it into uh um the Bible neither did The Apocalypse of Paul the prayer of Paul Paul's letter to the laodocians The Apocalypse of Paul the third letter to the Corinthians

(25:12) Paul's letter to Seneca and so forth these are all much later pseudopographical texts that are in Paul's name but definitely not written by Paul the same way that the letters of Timothy to Timothy and Titus are not written by Paul but those did make it in so in other words it's not not just because they're authentic or not that they made it in and it's not just because they're early or not that they made it in because again an authentic letter to the Corinthians which would have been the earliest that didn't make

(25:41) it in and a bunch of letters that Paul didn't write did make it in so so how did text make it into the Canon so Antiquity is a feature so most of the old oldest texts that survive did make it in but we are aware of lost texts that are just as old that were not included like like I say xeroth letter to the Corinthians the cue sayings gospel and so forth um one of the things that was really um important to the early Christians was this text attributed to an apostle or an Apostolic companion real or putative and

(26:25) so the fact that um let's say second Peter is written and it's claims to be written by the Apostle Peter that's why that thing made it into the Canon even though all Scholars agree that that is not written by Peter so in other words it's a pseudoprographical text it got into the Bible because early Christians believed that Peter wrote it or some early Christians enough early Christians believe that he did even though he didn't uh that's one of the ways you get in it's addressed to an audience who are

(26:55) successful in the air with air is successful in later Christianity in other words because Paul's Greek congregations become the origins for the proto-orthodox church which becomes the uh you know the Orthodox and Catholic church and all modern Christianity descends from that church the other early christianities that people who are dosetics the marcianites montanus the gnostics the ebionites and so forth texts that are are written to those communities get knocked out because the proto-orthodox people label those as heresy and then they don't put them on

(27:40) their list and they ultimately stop copying them in some cases they burn them and so forth and so we lose them and ultimately if the texts have teachings that are consistent with doctrine that later becomes Christianity so later becomes Orthodox and later Christianity those got put in whereas if there's something in the text that seems to be a problem that'll get left out so what kept texts got left out ones that didn't have Apostolic Authority so even very important early Christian writers like Clement Ignatius polycarp The Shepherd of hermas and so forth

(28:15) these were on a lot of early Christian fathers lists of texts that should be in the Bible but because Clement and Ignatius and polycarp and so forth are not Apostles they are early important early Christian leaders who are in the next Generations that got left out um like I say if they got addressed to an audience that died out so there's whole gospels as we've seen for the Hebrews the eubianites the nazarians and so forth their gospels are left out and lost like I say it contains teachings that are rejected as heretical like gnosticism docitism uh adoptionism so

(28:54) docitism is essentially the different christology so Christ is not fully human and fully Divine but the idea of it is he's really just Divine and he only seems to be human that's docitism or he's adoptionism is kind of the other thing which is he's fully human he's just a regular guy he was perfect and and God adopts him as a sort of adopted son or the gnosticism which is a kind of uh spiritual dualism the whole world is uh is corrupt there's an elaborate mythology and secret behind it and so forth about the true spiritual world and so forth so anything that kind of leads

(29:32) that way um that gets kicked out stories that are too fanciful to be believed there's a lot of um there's a lot of fanciful stuff that does make it in the Bible um you know we we talk about we're going to talk about Genesis again soon and obviously Genesis includes a story in the Garden of Eden of a of a snake that talks right and there's also in the early in the pentateuch there's the story in Exodus of the story of you know balaam's ass a donkey that talks and so forth so there is some fanciful stuff that happens in the Bible

(30:10) nevertheless a lot of fanciful stuff gets left out and we did one we've done lectures on the infancy Gospel of Thomas which we shouldn't confuse with um the sayings Gospel of Thomas essentially infancy Thomas is like talking about the childhood of Jesus and and it's an imagination of what if um what if God was a a five-year-old boy um what kind of Mischief was he get into and so he does all kinds of crazy stuff you know with you know all of his magic powers and so forth um it's something that's an interesting or uh thought experimented funny and it

(30:47) actually provides um um popular backstory so I've been to um kind of ancient or medieval uh churches in the south of France which are decorated with uh with images of from the stories of the infancy gospel even though that didn't make it into the text um also extremely obvious forgeries got left out so for example these letters the letters of Paul to the philosopher Seneca so Seneca is a contemporary Roman philosopher uh Seneca is not interested in or nor cared about anything about Christianity is an important person Paul is not an important person Christianity is not important at all at the time of

(31:31) Paul and so there was no way that Seneca and Paul are writing back and forth to each other this is these are something that somebody wrote several centuries later and so that did not make it in as I mentioned the Book of Revelation just barely squeaked its way into the cannon so the apostolic authority of the Apocalypse of John is ambiguous so many people like I say tried to imagine that the author John of uh the Revelator who was a guy named John in other words is the same as the Apostle but very many early Christians could really easily tell otherwise they were all people who

(32:13) could speak Greek and they could tell that the Book of Revelation is written in almost some kind of a a slangy street Greek as opposed to the Gospel of John which is a much more elevated Greek um another problem that the apocalypse had is it was beloved by a community that became seen as heretical so there were early apocalypticists the montanus for example who thought that the end of the world was coming they had a date for it they all go up and uh and got to stop all their things they get up they throw

(32:43) everything away and they go up and wait for the m to happen and it doesn't happen has a bunch of imagery and teachings that are borderline as regards to later Orthodoxy it was rejected and turned by the nestorians and other peoples and and even as recently as the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther almost rejected it so Martin Luther and he when he is when the Protestants are making their own version of the Bible they actually rip a whole bunch of texts out of the Old Testament uh which for Protestants are now called the Apocrypha so books like first and second Maccabees there's a bunch of

(33:20) different books that were part of the Septuagint version of the Bible and are still part of the Orthodox and Catholic Old Testament but are not part of the Protestant Old Testament and Luther was also kind of persuaded initially thinking that that there's nothing much Christian and going on in in the Book of Revelation although then he changed his mind once he started reading it as a as an allegory and so forth okay so that brings us to the dedic a uh which like I say means the teaching so this is the earliest surviving Church

(33:57) order you know like I say that genre of church order most Scholars as they say date the text to the first century some to the second century it's possible like I kind of did in my chart that there are components of it that are very early and that there may be combined together because it is a composite work so in other words there's a bunch of different component texts that have been added together even though it's not a very long text um it's one of the very you know again among the early Christian writers

(34:27) the church fathers eusebius who's essentially the first um kind of major christian antiquarian he's he's in sometimes called like the the father of church history but his history is so poor I have trouble calling him a historian so it would say an antiquarian um he knows this book the teaching of the Apostles but he already himself considers it spurious as do other uh early writers in other words fourth Century writers like him uh athanasius refinists and so forth who mentioned this text so it's it's circulating still but they don't think that it's actually even though it's called teaching of the

(35:06) Apostles they don't think the apostles actually wrote this so because it was rejected from the Canon by eusebius and others because they didn't think it was written actually written to the by the apostles the dedicay was lost then for centuries a couple fragments had been known and preserved but in 1873 a Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop valothios brienneos in other words a a Greek Metropolitan means Archbishop essentially he discovered a copy of the data K in a really important manuscript bound together with a bunch of other really interesting early texts in a monastery in Constantinople what's now

(35:53) Istanbul so let's look at the contents of the dedicate that we have it in its present form as it's been rediscovered so although like I say it's a pretty brief text it's only maybe 2300 words long it actually is a combination of distinct component texts and some of which anyway describe a very very early Christianity so the beginning of it the first six chapters are essentially the two ways the book of the two ways and this is rules lists of do's and don'ts thou shalts and thou shalt not specially the next section chapters 7 through 10

(36:35) are instructions concerning Christian sacraments chapters 11 through 15. I guess the continuation of that but anyway it's now concerning more concerning offices in the church or roles in the church church priesthood however it's understood and then there's kind of a final sign off which is short a chapter finals chapter 16 which is sort of an end times prophecy be vigilant the end is coming and so forth so um the text we can as we have it does seem to overlap a bunch in terms of its uh themes and even its quotations with the

(37:14) gospel of Matthew so in its present form the author or the redactor who's put together the Decay has probably got the gospel of Matthew at the very least maybe Matthew and Luke and a bunch of other texts like Hebrews may be available to them as they are combining the dedicate together and forming it um certainly the formulation of the Lord's Prayer in the Decay very closely resembles the version that we have in Matthew and there are other references to Matthew so for example the dedicate quotes Matthew and so like the community that produced Matthew the didike seems to come from a

(37:54) Jewish Christian group so the gospel of Matthew is often called like the most Jewish of the of the canonical Bibles and it's sort of written to um let's say Jewish Christians which is to say Christians who are still thinking it's important who come from a Jewish background and who's still considered um keeping kosher or keeping some forms of Jewish law as essential to what it is to being Christian so in other words that as opposed to let's say the Paul's more Gentile Christian groups people who are largely groups that are largely converted from Greek speaking former pagans people who

(38:38) worship the old gods of Greece and so forth who then convert directly from the Greek religion to Christianity without needing to be circumcised or to keep any kind of Jewish law because Paul has said that's not necessary for Christians so the Decay and the gospel of Matthew is kind of coming out of that other kind of Judaism or Jewish Christian tradition so a potential theme in Jesus teaching opposes scriptural legalism so if you're reading through the gospels Jesus is almost continuously berating people and trying to spell this

(39:22) out to people he's trying to promote the idea of doing the right thing motivated by love rather than going through a list of rules and just doing them according to following the rule book and so forth um it's almost always uh you're trying to do things as the spirit of a thing so people will complain in the gospels that Jesus is going around healing people on the Sabbath when you're not supposed to do work on the Sabbath and so forth um despite the fact that that does seem to be the central thrust of what

(39:55) Christianity should even be about in other words as opposed to in its kind of um emergence out of second temple Judaism nevertheless people really prefer I think to have fixed lists of rules they want to have a list that they can check off oh I've done that I've done that I've done that so that they can think very highly of themselves and they can judge others and so even though it's sort of anti what Christianity is all about nevertheless Christians very quickly developed and devised kind of rules lists and also very quickly

(40:30) started judging each other by for not you know obeying the rules and so forth so that's certainly part of what happens at the beginning of the data K which is like I say the two ways there's a first more or less a list of thou shalts and thou shalt knots um this is probably uh many scholars think that this is probably actually a there was a pre-christian there was a Jewish text of list of these kinds of Commandments that has been added to and sort of christianized which is interesting again because it's

(41:05) kind of showing how um that this community that is making like the gospel of Matthew the community is making like the dedicay is emerging out of second temple Judaism and one of the uh things about this section of the of the text it compares um very closely with let's say rules for conduct that exists in the qumran community the Dead Sea Scrolls a Jewish sect the essenes that are contemporary who have their own kind of set of lists of rules and things that they should do and there are also parallels and some of these other early Christian texts like

(41:43) uh the letter Barnabas and and The Shepherd of Hermes and so forth so we'll read a little bit about the beginning you know about this uh two ways the preface here uh as we started it says this is the Lord's teaching to the Nations to the Gentiles by the 12 apostles so that's the title right the dedicate the Lord's teaching dedicate to the heathens the Gentiles the Nations by The Twelve Apostles So It Begins here there are two ways one of life and one of death and between the two ways there is a great difference

(42:20) now this is the way of life first you must love God who made you and second your neighbor as yourself and whatever you want people to refrain from doing to you you must not do to them okay so this is pretty interesting right out of the gate and so we're going to set up a polemic here you know you got to do do right to for the to be the way of life and do don't avoid wrong for the way of death but and but more or less it's going to be a list of Commandments and the list starts off with the greatest commandment as understood anyway as as presented by Jesus in the gospels love God with all

(43:05) your might and heart and so forth this is also the greatest commandment or a central commandment in Judaism as well but then it's coupled with the one that Jesus said is like unto it in the gospels love your neighbor as thyself and then paired with that in this in this formula is a golden rule right so whatever you want people to refrain from doing to you you must not do to them so this is a negative version of the Golden Rule um the way it's expressed in the gospels is do unto others as you you know would have them do unto you which is kind of the positive version of it as opposed to

(43:40) don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you which is the same same principle but the negative version right so it's pretty interesting that that's kind of how the christianized version of this kind of um uh Commandments list starts off it continues with a series of maxims and the interesting thing is that these are teachings that are are normally attributed to Jesus in the gospels but here it doesn't say Jesus said this or anything like that it's just it's just listed as general maxims

(44:11) so it says what the maxims teach is bless those who curse you pray for your enemies moreover fast for those who persecute you for what credit is it to you if you love those who love you is that not how the Heathen act but you must love those who hate you and then you will make no enemies so so these are all sort of um in keeping with teachings of Jesus in the gospels but kind of interestingly anyway here they're just not they're not given the authority of Jesus so in other words it's not saying Jesus said this and it's sort of interesting because

(44:48) again as we've seen elsewhere when we're looking at uh for example the Jewish Christian communities that are led by for example James the brother of Jesus and texts that use James's Authority like the Book of James the Epistle of James even though that's not written by the actual brother of Jesus but written in his name so by a group that is is looking to that kind of that background they also will attribute to James James will say things which are kind of teachings of Jesus elsewhere but they're kind of a general list of these early groups teachings that don't necessarily

(45:33) aren't necessarily needing to be anchored in Jesus Authority which is anyway just an interesting overlap we have here the maxims are Then followed by a list of Thou shalt knots which may derive from a pre-christian Jewish source so you know our famous of those is The Ten Commandments uh this is kind of an expansion of all that so these are do not murder do not commit adultery do not corrupt boys do not fornicate do not steal do not practice magic do not go in for sorcery do not murder a child in corruption or kill a newborn infant do not cover it your neighbor's property do not commit perjury do not bear fault and

(46:11) witness do not slander do not bear grudges and so forth it goes on lots and lots of do Nots so like I say one thing that this list I think tells us is what this particular Community thinks are Essentials of Christian Behavior as they are doing their boundary maintenance what is part of the group and what is not they are saying do not do all these things these are things that are are these are our lists of do's and don'ts the next two chapters are a second list which are written in poetry and they're more elaborated so it's not just don't do this don't do this is a little bit

(46:44) longer in terms of the description and the reader in this case is addressed as my child uh six times and so it reads more like kind of the same kind of sayings things that you shouldn't do but it's uh just in a more poetic way of saying it so my child do not be a diviner for that leads to idolatry do not be an enchanter or an astrologer or a magician and the language here is actually even don't be a mathematician because mathematicians could lead to doing astrology now there's a lot of slippery slope arguments here have no wish to observe or heed such practices don't watch people doing divination all

(47:21) that because all of this breeds idolatry so it lists a bunch of other things that lead to other things that you want to avoid It also says things like be humble since the humble will inherit the earth be meek for blessed are the meek they'll inherit the earth in other words teachings again attributed to Jesus elsewhere are quoted here but not attributed to Jesus still so it's sharing some of those teachings um It also says for example my child day and night you should remember him who preaches God's word to you and honor him as you would the Lord so this is kind of talking about

(48:00) preachers teachers who are in the community and who are sharing God's word the good news and so forth you're to honor those preachers as you would the Lord for where the Lord's nature is discussed there the Lord is every day you should seek the company of saints so this is also making use of this early in some cases pre-christian word for other Christians the Saints fellow saints that exists in some of Paul's letters for example and also acts so descriptions you know before other Christians are calling each other Christians the Saints to enjoy their

(48:40) refreshing conversation here's the next precept you must not start a schism that's important because that has obviously been happening a lot so we're all breaking up Christians are all fighting with each other there's all these different schismatic groups you must not start schisms but you must reconcile those at strife it says here your judgments must be fair you must not play favorites when reproving transgressions and so this is a I just highlight anyway the fact that it's quoting Proverbs here to uh to telling people to do Fair judgments as

(49:17) opposed to Jesus's Maxim about judging which is a lot harder to do Jesus says judge not you know he's telling you not to judge um hear the dedicating you know be fair in your judgments so it's too hard to follow that and so petitions want to be judgmental right away and it's softened already here in the dedicate some of the lists include values that seem to be consonant with early Christian focused on the poor and the marginalized so we've talked about how the earliest Jesus movement is probably a group of of mendicants who renounced

(49:58) worldliness and who are living by begging for their daily bread and so forth and they are and Jesus is teaching blessed are the poor and so forth um so the way of death is said to include people who look for profit people who have no pity for the poor people who do not exert themselves on behalf of the oppressed people who turn their backs on the needy people who oppress The Afflicted people who defend the rich people who unjustly condemn the poor and are therefore thoroughly Wicked my children may you be saved from all of this so there's an emphasis here on

(50:38) focusing on the poor the oppressed and so forth the marginalized and that certainly comes through the text is also though pragmatic so while the teacher is pretty Stark and saying there's a big vast difference between the way of life and the way of death and while the text states that the goal for Christians is perfection the author concedes if you can't be perfect then quote do what you can so so he says here see that no one leads you astray from the way of the teaching since oh since such a one's teaching is Godless so don't follow people away from this teaching it's Godless if you can

(51:20) bear the Lord's full yoke you will be perfect but if you cannot yeah then do what you can and so for example they have an example now about food undertake what you can um you know in terms of what are we expected to eat keep strictly away from what is offered to Idols for that implies worshiping dead gods so as we see Elsewhere for example in the letters to Paul one of the major issues that early Christians have as Christians separate themselves off from their Pagan neighbors the majority of meat in a city

(52:01) that is processed almost all of the processing takes place at a temple so that a cow or whatever the bull is going to be brought to a temple of so and so and it's going to be sacrificed a lot of times we now think of sacrifices being a holocaust sacrifice where the entire bowl is burned up and so forth that was very rarely done usually speaking it's the unusable parts and some of the fat and so forth that is burned up and in general most of the meat is actually preserved and and made into kind of a feast that would be part of a regular

(52:37) religious ceremony and then the remainder of it is then sold in the city markets and so more or less any meat that is going to be available in a pagan city is meat that has been offered to idols and this has been a problem that early Christians are sort of facing well should we be really eating this isn't that saying that we are actually worshiping uh like it's what it's calling here dead Gods it's actually we're almost saying that we are honoring Zeus and and Athena and Neptune and Pluto or Poseidon and all the Greek gods and so forth

(53:11) um this is similar to what we read in Paul so in First Corinthians 8 Paul has kind of an even more pragmatic response to this question of eating sacrificial meat like I said it's sort of a universal problem all meat is going to be like this so he's saying look Paul writes so then look about eating food sacrifice to idols we know quote an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one so in other words these Gods aren't real anyway so it's not really a big deal but he says not everybody

(53:45) possesses this knowledge so we you know those of us the people I'm writing to and me I'm in the know we we understand that Zeus doesn't exist and so forth but some people by the way are so accustomed to Idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a real God and since their conscious is weak it is therefore defiled they think that meat has become defiled because it's been sacrificed to this God as if that God exists you know Paul says food does not bring us near to God and we're no worse if we

(54:17) eat and if we don't eat and know better if we do and so forth so this idea that they have is not true it's superstitious and so forth be careful he ever says though however that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to these weak people for someone with a weak conscious sees you you know somebody who knows everything about this eating an idol at an Idol's Temple won't that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to Idols so this weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is

(54:48) destroyed by your knowledge in other words you know better and so you don't care about this nonsense but some of these other people who don't know any better are going to get lettuce stray so it's meaningless but you shouldn't do it if you are around weak Christians to continue you might confuse is more or less Paul's response Paul is a little more explicit even later on in the letter in First Corinthians 10 he says look eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscious you don't go to the meat market and say hey was this I think we had a big sacrifice to Athena yesterday

(55:17) is this part of that meat uh you know don't ask them don't ask don't tell about this meat and he says if you go to an unbeliever's house if somebody who's not a Christian a regular Pagan and they give you a meal and you go eat whatever they put in front of you and don't worry about that don't say oh wait a second this isn't this isn't Pagan sacrificial meat is it but if you go to that dinner he says and someone says to you well this was offered in a sacrifice and then he kind of points it out to you like that well then you don't eat it because then he's kind of they're making a big deal about it so so that's more or less what he's

(55:48) saying it doesn't matter if you eat the meat but um you know if somebody's making a big stink about it you know then you know then yeah go ahead and say there's a principle and so forth that's essentially the pragmatism that's kind of on display both in Paul's writing and in the Decay and I think that again this is despite the fact that there's like these whole long rule list even at the beginning of the dedicay um even that text is kind of like you know if you do it all you're perfect but you know if you can't do what you can so I do think it's a it's it's actually meant to be somewhat in keeping with the

(56:27) uh opposition to legalism uh the texts are fairly um relaxed in that sense okay so the next component of the text is about church practices and organizational structure and for me this is actually a lot more interesting than the Commandments list and so uh chapter 7 through 10 here are instructions concerning sacraments so that part begins with rules about baptism so it says about baptism the word is essentially immersion as about baptism this is how you baptize give Public Instruction on all these points and then baptize in running water in living water in the name of the father

(57:13) and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and if you don't have running water baptize people in some other kind of water if you cannot baptize them in cold water then baptize them in warm water if you have neither a pool you know any kind of pool cold or warm living or or still then pour water on their head three times and say in the name of the father and the son of the holy spirit so before baptism moreover the one who baptizes and the one being baptized must fast and anybody else who's going to show up there who was able to and who can should also fast and you must tell the one being baptized to

(57:54) fast for a day or you know two days if they can beforehand so in other words ideally baptism should be by immersion in cold living running water like I say like a river or or a pool that is filled by you know rain or something like that but if that's not possible it's okay to immerse someone in water that is like warm or drawn like making a bathtub or something like that and if you don't have I need access to any of that just go ahead and sprinkle them so in other words the rules here are once again already quite symbolic and flexible you have the

(58:33) symbolism of what you want cold painful Living Water that you want to dunk people all the way and or in but if you don't have it you know you do it with what you can do uh next the dedicate talks about prayer so don't pray like the Hypocrites it says but pray as follows as the Lord bid Us in his gospel which is in the gospel here being referred to presumably is the gospel of Matthew and so it reads in the dedicate Our Father in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us today

(59:10) our bread for the morrow and forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation but save us from the evil one for yours is the power and the glory forever and you should pray that in this way three times a day it specifies so we have multiple versions of what's called The Lord's Prayer so when Jesus is saying as an example and teach us to pray the apostles say in the gospels and he gives this example the version that we have in Luke is the shortest and the kind of simplest and so that goes father may your name be revered as holy may your kingdom come

(59:51) give us each day our daily bread forgive our sins and for ourselves forgive for us for we for ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us and do not bring us to the time of trial so that's a more modern translation of the earlier kind of the old-fashioned way that I read it in the other translation so between Luke and Matthew the differences are uh the Matthew text has in heaven to specify about the father may your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven and then at the end of don't you know don't lead us into temptation but rescue

(1:00:28) us from the evil one and so those are all added between the uh Luke version which usually people don't repeat and they instead cite the the Matthew version and then the difference between the Matthew version and the dedicate is the inclusion at the end of the doxology for yours is the power and the glory forever and ever amen um that part is not in the I don't have it on the Matthew section here because it's actually not in the earliest um uh manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew which is why uh for example in the Orthodox and the especially Catholic

(1:01:08) Church um when they're saying the Lord's Prayer they don't include that component it's in later um later editions of Matthew later manuscripts and it's in the dedicate here and so essentially if you go to it's in the King James version of the Bible and so if you go to many Protestant churches that that addition will be included at the end so there's also instructions for what to do on Sunday the dedicay proposes for example that Eucharist should be celebrated by Christians every Sunday on every Lord's day we read in chapter 14

(1:01:42) his special day come together and break bread and give thanks first confessing your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure anyone at variance with his neighbor must not join you unless they are reconciled lest your sacrifice be defiled for it was of the sacrifice that the Lord said quote always and everywhere offer me a pure sacrifice for I am a great king says the Lord and my name is marveled at by the Nations and so that's not the Lord Christ that is the Lord in the Old Testament and so that is actually a quotation from the Old Testament Book of Malachi the

(1:02:21) prophet Malachi and so forth so the idea of it though is that in this Christian Community they want to have a the Eucharist celebrated every week and they also though want to confess and also make peace with all of your neighbors before you're actually able to before you actually come together for communion so like I say after the baptism and fasting and prayer now that it gives instructions for the Eucharist back in chapter nine so about the Eucharist we read in the dedicate it says this is how to give thanks

(1:02:58) first in connection with the cup say we thank you our father for the holy Vine of David your child which you have revealed through Jesus your child to you be glory forever then in connection with the peace essentially the piece of bread broken off from the loaf say we thank you our father for the life and knowledge which you have revealed through Jesus your child to you be glory forever so unlike the formula for baptism which should be very familiar to most Christians I'm baptizing the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Spirit that's very common and has continued these are very unfamiliar formulas for Eucharist

(1:03:43) prayers um I'm sorry the second one can even continues and has an addendum this piece of bread was scattered over the hills and was then brought together and made one so let your church be brought together from the ends of your kingdom for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever so so yeah it's it's a strange formula and it's also out of order so wine first then bread that's opposite from the New Testament accounts of the last supper and it's opposite from the practice of most Christians today including Community of Christ like I say also

(1:04:18) um these prayers really differ from New Testament examples so for example if we go to what Paul says in our earlier text or the earliest text around 50 A.D in Corinthians Paul says I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body that is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way he took the cup also after supper saying this cup is the New Covenant in my blood

(1:04:57) do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me so those are the formulas for the Eucharist in the order excuse me the order of bread and then wine that Paul gives in his first letter to the Corinthians likewise in the synoptic gospels in the gospels beginning with Mark but also followed in Matthew and Luke and I'm using Matthew here because of the relation between Matthew and the dedicate Jesus institutes the practice of the Eucharist during the episode of The Last Supper so while they were eating we read in the gospel of Matthew Jesus Took bread and when he'd given

(1:05:35) thanks he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying Take and Eat This is my body then he took a cup and we'd be given thanks he gave it to them saying drink from it all of you this is my blood of the Covenant which is poured out for many for the Forgiveness of sins so it's a simple formula here too which is more similar frankly to the one that's in Paul and may actually Paul may be the original and this is an expansion from that for whatever reason the dedicate has a very different formula and it's pretty interesting the fact

(1:06:09) that it has that variation even though the authors of the didike have access to Matthew the dedicate also seems to assume the Eucharist is an actual share meal not just the very symbolic way we do it today where you just have a little piece of bread and a little tiny cup the way we have it so for example it says after you've finished your meal in other words they all eat together say grace in this way so it gives a kind of a benediction or Grace that you say at the end of it we thank you Holy Father for your sacred name which you

(1:06:43) have lodged in our hearts Almighty Master you have created everything for the sake of your name and have given men food and drink to enjoy that they may thank you but to us you have also given spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Jesus Christ your child remember Lord your church save it from Evil and make it perfect by your love make it holy and gather it together from the Four Winds into your kingdom which you have made ready for it for yours is the power and the glory forever they like the doxology honest the kingdom the

(1:07:14) power and the glory forever and ever and it's in a lot of these formulas uh let Grace come and let this world pass away Hosanna to the god of David there's a lot of um there's a lot of mention of David in this again because like I say this is a um sign anyway about more of a Jewish Christian tradition and so even you know even talking about the vine of David there is more mention as a title in Matthew calling Jesus Son of David it exists in um Mark and Luke but it's repeated many more times in in Matthew so this community is more remembering

(1:07:56) um Christ or Messiah as a a precursor of that in the form of uh the some mythological anyway the ancestor David um the text also advocates for closed communion so um there's a question do you let so are all welcome at Christ stable do you let everybody partake of it or is it or do you keep it closed the dedicate is on the side of close so it says You must not let anyone eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized in the lord's name um so there was a we had that in Eric Church we had a tradition of closed communion which uh we moved away from

(1:08:41) uh and open communion in the in the 1990s I think is when it happened but could have been a little later but anyway maybe it was in the 2000s as late as that but before my time so next after sacraments the next part is concerning what I'm saying concerning priesthood but um it doesn't really say priesthood it's essentially maybe Church offices although it doesn't say offices it is talking about Bishops deacons and teachers and when it's talking about teachers it's giving teachers it's talking about teachers as Apostles and Prophets and it actually is giving

(1:09:13) special emphasis to Christian Apostles and Prophets which is um unusual especially let's say as the church experience runs on we don't often think about too much about early Christian Prophets John the Revelator is maybe you think of as a prophet and apostles essentially fall out of the narrative fairly early I mean after the first generation in general you know we don't think about apostles so here's what it says concerning teachers of which Apostles and Prophets are a category you should welcome anyone who

(1:09:51) comes your way and teaches you all we have been saying but if the teacher proves himself a renegade by teaching otherwise and teach by teaching otherwise contradicts all of this so in other things out of out of harmony with everything like this then pay no attention to him but if his teaching furthers the Lord's righteousness and knowledge welcome him as the Lord so this portion of the dedicate I think seems to reflect a very early stage of Christianity when Christian communities regularly hosted itinerant teachers

(1:10:27) um but it's also kind of seeing problems are already emerging right so if the teacher proves himself a renegade don't pay attention to them you know so there's already uh Renegade teachers that the data case very aware of so now about the apostles and Prophets it says act in line with the gospel precept welcome every Apostle on arriving as if he were the Lord so this seems to be again the precept found in Matthew anyone who welcomes you saying that to the apostles welcomes me and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the

(1:11:03) one who sent me so uh if you were you should be welcoming Apostles that are coming to your community as if it were the Lord but that guy who's come and visited you welcomed as if you were the Lord he must not that Apostle he must not stay Beyond one day in case of necessity however the next day too so he can maybe stay two days if it's necessary but if he stays three days he is a false prophet on departing an apostle must not accept anything save sufficient food to carry him to his next lodging if he asks you for money he is a false prophet so they

(1:11:44) are already trying to follow the precept um essentially of that is about favoring and supporting mendicant Apostles people who are coming preaching begging and then going on they're following that that initial teaching but they're obviously already having problems with what their what the text is calling false prophets people who want to stay and hang out and don't want to keep going on to the next place and possibly are trying to you know make their life easier by getting more money than they need to just continue a life of daily begging

(1:12:22) so this brings me to this question that I think is confusing to a lot of Christians a lot of Christians um when we talk about Apostles how how problematic were Apostles weren't there only 12 Apostles I mean as how many apostles were there and so people maybe even a lot of Christians as we did in our in our lecture on the historical Apostles Wonder Isn't that a trick question shouldn't there's 12 Apostles right and so they Wonder well maybe I'm meaning there were only 11 because Judas Iscariot is kicked out but you know

(1:12:52) according to acts Judas was replaced by a Matthias so there's no problem with the twelve but what we have to remember is is that there were not just 12 Apostles in early Christianity there were many many more than 12 Apostles in the first generations of Christianity so the 12 are a subset of a much larger group of Apostles the 12 are a group that Jesus in the gospels anyway historically sets apart to symbolically represent a new Israel they symbolically represent the restored 12 tribes of Israel and so and we call them The

(1:13:30) Twelve Apostles but in fact there's plenty more Apostles and in the um uh in the Gospel of Luke for example in the chapter after uh Jesus sends forth the twelve he gets another 72 Apostles together and he sends forth the seventy called the 70 but or the 72 Apostles depending on the translation of that and so for example the second most famous Apostle after Peter may be the most famous Paul and it depends on how famous you think Peter and Paul are to each other anyway right up there in the top two Paul is not ever one of the twelve

(1:14:07) so um you know he's an apostle generally conceded by moderate Christians to be an apostle but he's not one of the twelfth um so be one of that list of 70 not he wasn't part of the original 70 but maybe another group of 70 later on and there's not just 70 anyway it's a it's part of this larger group of Apostles so what is an apostle the title Apostle literally means one who was sent forth and the sense of being a messenger or an ambassador so like I say if the early Jesus movement is centered on a mendicant spiritual group that renounced worldly

(1:14:50) entangle Nimitz such as property the apostles were those who were sent to share that group's message with sympathetic supporters that are living in the world and so uh the gospel of Mark includes a description of Jesus instructions for sending forth those Apostles the cues sayings gospel preserves a second set and so uh because the authors of Matthew and Luke have access to both Mark and Q they react to those two lists so the gospel of Matthew synthesizes them and brings those two lists together whereas the author of Luke includes both lists the first of them being used for the sending

(1:15:35) of the twelve and like I say the second is for sending the 70 or 72 more Apostles so just how does it work so um in Mark we read Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits he ordered them to take nothing for their Journey except a staff no bread no bag no money in their belts but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics I only had one so he said to them whenever you enter a house stay there until you leave that place don't go shopping around what house you're going to stay at if the any place will not welcome you and they refuse to

(1:16:18) hear you as you leave shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them so they went out and proclaimed that all should repent they cast out many demons and Anointed with oil many who were sick and he cured and cured them so so essentially the 12 are given authority over the unclean spirits and they cast them out they provide healings social healings and so forth spiritual healings they go out in twos two by twos they're proclaiming the good news repent turn your life around into the new uh

(1:16:53) Covenant and Christ take nothing with you you know no bread no bag you can have a staff and you can have one tunic right and then again don't shop around once you're in a house stay there until you leave uh the author of Luke then repeats those same instructions to the Apostles of the twelve and Luke 9 but that includes the Q version in chapter 10 of Luke's gospel so Jesus says to these ones the 72 the Harvest is plentable but the laborers are few therefore ask the lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into his Harvest go on your way see I'm sending

(1:17:31) you out like Lambs amidst the Wolves carry no purse no bag no sandals and these guys can't even have sandals so anyway greet nobody on the road whatever house you enter say first to the house peace to this house and if anyone is there who shares in peace your peace will rest on that person but if not it will return to you remain in the same house eating and drinking whatever they provide so don't worry about these kosher rules and so forth the laborer deserves to be paid but don't move around from house to house don't don't say oh this fancier

(1:18:08) person now is going to invite you into their house and give you better food nope stay with the first person that invited you in cure the sick who are there and say to them the kingdom of God has come near you so essentially between those two rules you know there's no no bread no bag no money no second tunic no looking for better accommodation but yes you can have staff and sandals you can you're supposed to declare repentance cast out demons same thing in the second list no bag no purse no sandals don't even greet people on the road don't look for better

(1:18:38) accommodations eat what's given to you share peace cure the sick and so forth so um early Christianity then was led and spread by pairs of mendicant apostles who were speaking in the spirit the instructions that are given in the gospels and in the dedicate are kind of starkly pro-apostle so you are to receive the Apostle as if they were the Lord so that's pretty pretty big deal this person who's come into your house a stranger who has come to start preaching you're just supposed to treat them as if the Lord has entered your house do not deny anything said under the

(1:19:23) ecstatic influence of the spirit for this is an unpardonable sin so in other words when they start to speak from the spirit and they start preaching and prophesying and all those kind of things you can't say no that's not the case in that that kind of thing you have to actually listen to that as if that were again this Holy Spirit speaking and If you deny it that's actually the only unpardonable sin so taken together I think these precepts create a system that is very much open to abuse and potentially to chaos so and in addition

(1:20:00) the fact that this is the focus of early Christianity in other words that early Christians are represented by you know leaders or apostles who are going around and speaking by the spirit that also gives us a context for why early Christian mythology and so forth evolved so very rapidly because when you're speaking by the spirit people might tell stories about Jesus they might tell visions that they've had about Jesus for example Jesus walking on water or something like that and that's something that you've heard an apostle let's say telling a story about speaking

(1:20:38) under the influence of a spirit a vision maybe that they've had and then later people remember that and they remember that as a thing and then that gets written into a narrative Gospel of Jesus as if that's something that happened in the in the lifetime of the historical Jesus and so I think that that's part of the reason why there's no really clear separation between people visionarily speaking from the spirit that's what the Christianity is really about and uh you know and and then trying to record what the historical Jesus might

(1:21:11) have done which was not what Christianity was about so supporting mendicit prophets Apostles is Central to the role of the Christian Community as understood in the dedicay which advises for example take all of the first fruits of vintage and harvest and of cattle and sheep and give these first fruits to the prophets so in Judaism when you're taking your ties when you're taking your first fruits of vintage and harvest and cattle and sheep and so forth these are offerings that are going to go to the Temple and so

(1:21:49) forth the Jewish authorities but now what the dedicate is saying know what we're doing with all of these first fruits is we're going to give those to these mendicant Apostles this community of the poor these preachers who were are traveling and are only staying with you one day and moving on and so forth these give them to the prophets for they are your high priests if however you have no profit so if nobody nobody's come that day then take those same ties that you would normally have and give them to the poor generally to just regular poor people who are not mendicant Prophet Apostle people who are

(1:22:29) being poor out of out of wanting to be or because they have made a covenant to be that way with God just to regular poor people who are poor because of Misfortune give it that if you make bread take the first fruits and give in accordance with the precept similarly when you open a jar of wine or oil take the first fruits and give them to the prophets so that's very Central to the understanding of let's say the Christian lay Community as understood by the Decay you know this is very common to what um

(1:23:03) how Buddhism works so Buddhism has a much larger lay Buddhist community and one of the things that they do is the the regular people who are living their regular worldly lives they you know open their jar of wine or oil or they harvest and so forth and they take a partion the ties out of their out of their Surplus and so forth and they give that to the Buddhist monks and nuns who are mendicants who don't who are living by by begging and so forth so it would have been very very similar here the earliest configure of Christianity

(1:23:41) like I say seems to be these mendicular Apostles traveling about spreading the good news speaking by the spirit but how already by the time of the dedicate the system is clearly already plagued by Apostles or pseudo apostles who have teachings that contradict the gospel as it's already understood by the dedicate authors Community as well as by maybe those are maybe those are just heterodox or Apostles or people who have a different faction or understanding of Christianity but it's also plagued by apostles who let's say want to settle down and enjoy the community's

(1:24:20) hospitality for more than one or two days as well as by people who say they're apostles who are asking for more food or money than is necessary to get them to the next town so already you can see how the system would lead to abuses and that's certainly happening and the dedicate text is warning about it so the Decay actually says you know even though we're not ever denying let's say what's said in ecstatic utterances when people are speaking by the spirit you cannot contradict the spirit because it's an unpardonable offense it's quick to say however

(1:24:57) not everybody making ecstatic utterances is a true prophet but only if he behaves like the Lord it is by their conduct that a false prophet and a true Prophet can be distinguished for example for instance if a prophet marks out a table in the spirit then he must not eat from it if he does he's a false prophet and again every Prophet who teaches the truth but then fails to practice what he preaches that's a false prophet so if he says do this and then you see him doing something else that's a false prophet so the Decay recognizes that there are many let's say false Apostles and

(1:25:37) Prophets and it gives you a bunch of these kind of uh crib notes for how to tell the phonies as it understands them every attested and genuine Prophet who acts with a view of symbolizing The Mystery of the church and does not teach you to do all that he does you know it must not be judged by you his judgment rests with God for the ancient prophets too acted in this way but if someone says in the spirit give me money or give me something else you must not heed him however if he tells you to give for others who in need then no one must condemn him so if he's coming around and saying you know give

(1:26:17) everything that you have to the poor help out the poor people and so forth the marginalized that's great if he's like one of these modern evangelist prophets who's more or less saying you know uh this is a wonderful Ministry I have these nice two jets that you guys have bought me but I need a I need all of you poor old ladies who are on a fixed income and your Social Security to send me all of your checks so that I can buy my third jet or whatever these guys are saying um those are false prophets according to the dedicate so anyway the dedicate

(1:26:48) recognizes there are many of these uh false prophets so when advising the community to support the true Mexican Apostles the dedicate likewise preaches caution if there's a traveler who arrives help him all you can but he must not stay with you more than two days or if necessary three if he wants to settle with you and he's an artisan and he must work for his living don't just keep giving him stuff if he's hanging out with you you know like moves in with you if however he has no trade you know use your judgment in taking steps for him to

(1:27:24) live with you as a Christian without being idle so it doesn't have any good skills maybe he can clean up around the house or something like that in other words if he refuses to do this then he's trading on Christ you must be on your guard against such people so this is already like I say be on your guard against spongers this is already quite a pragmatic text you can see the problems that have already emerged out of this tradition of mendicant Apostles just in the first Generations so in addition to that favored role of teachers which is to say mendicant

(1:27:56) Apostles and Prophets traveling and speaking in the spirit the dedicate has um briefly mentions the community's own local officials in chapter 15. so it says You must then elect for yourselves Bishops and deacons who are a credit to the Lord men who are gentle generous faithful and well tried for their Ministry is identical with that of prophets and teachers you must not therefore despise them for along with the prophets and teachers they enjoy a place of honor among you there's not a lot of more information

(1:28:33) than that and so kind of is the implication of it is you know this emerging new group local leaders um of each congregation there's going to be a bishop and a bunch of deacons maybe people who are uh overseeing or the the good of the established congregational community in each town or city nevertheless uh the text here is already even though the text is trying to say you know these guys should be in your guy's head on the same level with these Apostles and Prophets it's clear that they aren't for the people right because he's kind of saying you don't despise Bishops you know you shouldn't despise them you

(1:29:16) should you should honor them alongside the prophets but you know it's clear that people don't right so essentially this is the new emerging roles and indeed once you get to the second century there are no more traveling Apostles and Prophets they've been weeded out of the out of the church and instead the church is run by these Bishops and deacons and ultimately separated out having priests Elders as well as the new emerging officials so after the first generation of Chris first generations of Christianity anyway the role of roaming mendican Apostle

(1:29:53) prophets is Stamped Out as the focus shifts to Bishops deacons and so on leading fixed communities and like I say though the short shrift I think given these later positions by the dedicate kind of coupled with all of these tests for false prophets I think illustrates just this that this text is kind of written in an important moment in the evolution of Christianity in other words from the way it has been all the problems that are resulting to the way it's going to be and so it's a very interesting early conception of Christianity that we're able to see here in the middle of the dedicate

(1:30:31) the dedicate then includes part four very brief part the last chapter with a caution to the reader to be ready for when the hour of the Lord is coming uh as with so many early Christian texts uh author of The Gospel of Mark is an apocalypticist Paul as an apocalypticist who believes he's going to live to see a literal end of the world and uh second coming of Christ likewise obviously John the Revelator also is firmly convicted that that will happen and so this is in that same early generation kind of uh assurance that

(1:31:12) many early Christians had in a literal apocalypticism so it says watch over your life do not let your lamps go out we have a wonderful hymn keep your lamps trimmed and burning which I love uh do not let your do not keep your loins ungirded but be ready for you do not know the hour when the Lord is coming meet together frequently in search of what is good for your souls since a lifetime of faith will be of no advantage to you unless you prove perfect at the very last for in the final days multitudes of false prophets and seducers will appear sheep will turn into wolves love into

(1:31:50) hatred and for with the increase of iniquity men will hate persecute betray each other et cetera Etc and that's all the end times Antichrist appear and so forth so to summarize the dedicate I think is a very very interesting book it's among the earliest and I think most important texts left out of the Canon of the Christian the Christian Canon of the New Testament for me the central sections about priesthood and the sacraments are especially interesting as I think they give us insight into as I say that

(1:32:23) evolution of the very earliest Christian institutions and practices how the sacraments and other things are understood um while um also interesting but less so to me anyway that thou shalt not list I think um show very interesting overlap with the um that the movement here is emerging out of Judaism so many of these are similar to the uh Jewish Commandments The Ten Commandments lists and so forth uh a little bit expanded and have again interesting parallels with similar lists of how to act and not to act that exist among the essenes in

(1:33:01) the in the qumran community the Dead Sea scroll community and so forth and so that is my look at the Decay one of the Lost Books of the Bible so while Andrew is getting me the questions I'm going to take a little drink of water um Michelangelo asked wouldn't early church fathers have known that Peter probably couldn't write so so they probably would know yeah actually yes and so again so those letters that are attributed to Peter there are two letters in the New Testament text both of which are not written by Peter both of which claim to be written by Peter and uh and they're very much written by

(1:33:47) different people because uh they use extremely different uh Greek writing styles um and so what Saint Jerome says when again one of these early Christian fathers the guy who the pope uh commissions to translate all of the New Testament texts into Latin into the Vulgate and so therefore um one of the people who's really thinking about uh these texts so he his argument is or his apologetic for this is well what happened probably is Peter can't write necessarily but he's got secretaries and so probably what

(1:34:26) happened is Peter is talking to one secretary and that and when he's telling the Canon speaking the letter to the first guy he writes it in his Greek and he polishes it up and all that kind of thing and then later Peter has a second secretary and he writes it that way uh and so that's the kind of traditional apologetic for it but in fact actually um you know we can say that those aren't the case um that the the letters reflect later um later ideas in Christianity than when Peter would have already been dead and specifically second Peter is one that we

(1:34:59) can say for sure is a a later text that is in fact uh you know re a reworking of the Epistle of Jude which is uh it's not so it's not by Peter at all it's a it's a pseudopographic text Michelangelo also asks um when and how did the tradition of confession appear is it only Christian so yeah so the um this idea of confessing your sins it's obviously in the first century already uh and so it's in the in the dedicate because it is um it's suggesting that one of the things that you need to do to approach Eucharist is to reconcile yourself so confess any sins that you

(1:35:45) have you know to the community and then to um and to make peace with anybody you have that you're at odds with in the community before you are able to have essentially share the Peace of Christ together in the Eucharist and so what it is it develop it develops already in the first century and so that is a a Christian practice and it's maintained in um you know especially the Catholic tradition as a ritual where um members go and confess to priests and so forth as a I think it's probably a sacrament of the church in one of the sacraments confession and absolution

(1:36:21) uh in the Catholic tradition uh Daryl thank you for support Daryl Scott Daryl asks are there any Christian denominations today which have tried to integrate the dedicate into their practices I don't think so so the dedicay was lost like I say until the late 19th century and it's been found ever since um but I don't get the impression I guess I kind of don't think of the impression that is as well known as it probably should be so for example because it was a little bit of a later find you know like some of these very famous um 19th century compilations of Lost

(1:37:02) Books of the Lost New Testament the Forgotten books of Eden and so forth it doesn't include it on that list and so I think that a lot of people are just not that familiar with it and um the reality is is that most Christian denominations you know that have worked on their practices that are interested in this kind of thing they'd already kind of come up with all of their ideas let's say as of the time of the Protestant Reformation and so a lot of these kind of ideas are already gotten put into place so I don't know that anybody has

(1:37:33) kind of gone to the Decay and said oh we should really take a look at this and and and do something based on it um so I don't think it's always the answer Alexander Santos Anderson asks did the ditikay's rule about Apostles staying one to two days reveal the authors possibly negative view of Paul who writes about staying at individual Church communities for months or years that's an interesting question um what I would say to that though is is no because the dedicay included as we probably might have written that before

(1:38:09) we got to that later exemption that I read as a later section of that exemption it says it says if they want to settle among you and they have a trade then let them let them do that work by their trade and so Paul um definitely in his letters he talks about the trade that he has he's like a tent maker and things like that so what he's more or less saying is when he settled for one to two years staying in an individual church when he's living in Ephesus or whatever and writing to the Corinthians and so forth he's doing that he's saying I'm supporting myself I am I'm being a temp

(1:38:47) guy I am not living on your tithic and so Paul uh definitely is saying that so I don't think it's about that I think that it's about um uh you know again kind of these uh people this is a problem that existed also among um Greek philosophers so so we've talked about before for example the the cynics um who uh are supposed to be living very simply and living by begging and they uh you know they have maybe just as their whole possessions they have a staff and a and a maybe a robe and or One tunic and a cup or something like that a begging Bowl um and yet and and yet what would happen

(1:39:29) is is that you know there's some a couple of those guys who were you know very pure philosophers according to um you know Greek philosophy philosophically minded people but what also happened was any young person who kind of got that idea in in his head would grow his hair out get a bowl or whatever like to do performance art in the middle of the of the Agora or something like that and and and is kind of phoning it in or whatever is not as is not being as serious about it and so in that same way here maybe there are people that are

(1:40:01) um sort of instead of being fervent and you know really living according to the poverty and the mendicant way and all that kind of thing they're kind of going on they're they're late amazing along in other words they're they're able to tell a good story and they get a lot of good food and maybe they don't want to leave and that kind of a thing so I think that they're they're that's the thing that they're warning against um Bob Garrison says some Churches have communion every Sunday some Churches do it only once a month so yes

(1:40:31) um so our tradition and Community of Christ is uh do it once a month there are other churches where they have a communion service every week or even more um uh some do it less frequently there are some that are doing it I think on a quarterly basis and so forth uh the the precept in the letters of Paul is is I think get together and celebrate the Lord's Supper frequently so so I think that the biblical precept is more or less just it doesn't actually say how often you should do it um like I say the Bible

(1:41:09) um the New Testament doesn't include um a rule book like the dedicate so it doesn't tell you if you're gonna have communion do it this way do it every Sunday and and so forth or if you're you know you need to do the say the Lord's Prayer three times a day or all of the different rules that the dedicate kind of has and so lacking that answer different Christian denominations have said well frequently what does frequently mean well maybe that means every week well maybe that means every month maybe that means every quarter so

(1:41:40) frequently is you know is relative and so it depends on what people decide to do uh Max santhanax says what in your opinion do the qualifying aspects of this document have in common with rabbinic Jewish approaches to practical aspects of practice um so so in terms of um so in terms of what I was saying essentially that uh that that parts of the lists of the um of the Dow shouts and the Thou shalt knots and so forth the lists of things you should do and things that you shouldn't do um when I was saying that that is maybe emerging out of a a Jewish document

(1:42:29) um I would say that that is not so that wouldn't be coming out of rabbinic Judaism rabbinic Judaism is um is only beginning to evolve at the same time that the Decay is being written the dedicate is a very early document the main rabbinic documents they they look back to some very early teachers that would be contemporaries of Jesus and the author of The dedicate but in fact it's all written much later uh written down later and so and so but it's emerging out of is other kinds of pre-rabbinic second

(1:43:01) temple Judaism and so like I was saying it's more more comparisons have been made for example with like say the documents about how to live uh according to the rules and precepts of the community of the essenes at qumran so the Dead Sea scroll Community which again would be a a pre-rabbinic Jewish Community as opposed to the more modern um rabbinic Judaism ideas in terms of the qualifying aspects of the document so I think that that's part of the thing that Christians also don't um get about Jews and in fact the New Testament sort of caricatures Pharisees

(1:43:45) so the Pharisee sect is sort of the uh the Proto group of rabbis that eventually evolves into rabbinic Judaism but it's uh but it's character but caricatured in the in the Christian gospels as being focused only on legalism and that the law law of everything and forget the spirit of anything and that is really not um so that's not true in rabbinic Judaism there is a lot more focus on on obeying certain rules to keep kosher and doing these kinds of practices and that sort of thing but there are lots of qualifying things that the rabbis have

(1:44:23) been talking about then for you know 2000 years that get you to the modern day practices so um you know in Toronto here there's like a an air there's a community where certain Orthodox members of Judaism live in that and there's like an actual wire that extends all the way around it that is you know run along railroad tracks and on telephone poles and all these kind of things and because you're in that wire you're in a sacred Precinct and different things can happen within that as long as the wires up and things like the the Bible doesn't talk about that that's not in the Torah that is not in

(1:44:59) and that kind of a thing that is a um that is a a practice that has emerged after all of this dialogue that rabbis have had that has evolved to understand how to obey law in flexible new ways and so in that sense um uh Judaism even very heavily rule-focused Judaism has that flexibility the the issue is that makes it different in a way than Christianity because the Christian Focus continues to be I think or should be uh and certainly is in our tradition on principles as opposed to having a body of case law where you really you

(1:45:41) know now we have that wire and everything on in other words people have kind of agreed what the new rule is based on all of that whereas um with Christianity and kind of doing things kind of by the spirit you're supposed to kind of I think you're generally speaking uh reason it out for yourself in the present as opposed to writing a whole new set of rules on the rules on the rules in the debate that it gets us to a consensus in terms of that building uh way of how we how we follow precepts um so George says You must elect for yourself Bishops and he says that implies direct democracy of the

(1:46:18) congregation is that perhaps the biggest change leading to a church leading to established church and why it fell out of favor so so elections um election doesn't necessarily imply direct democracy there's a lot of Elections that happen when you say the election so there's a lot of Elections that happen in Antiquity where um where election kind of happens by let's say acclimation you could almost even say that when a Roman of a Victorious Roman General's troops all Acclaim that he is Caesar a claim him Emperor they are in in fact the troops

(1:47:03) are electing him to be Caesar and then they have to March back to Roman and fight it out with the other guy who maybe is the Rival Emperor and overthrow him and so forth that's one of the ways um the main ways that Caesars were elected or Emperors were elected let's say or selected in the um in Antiquity likewise um uh that is how for example popes the Bishops of Rome uh essentially were elected throughout the Central Middle Ages and everything until electoral reforms that happened in the later Middle Ages when it starts to get restricted where the election happens and it's just the Cardinals which is to

(1:47:42) say the local deacons priests and Bishops around the city of Rome the Cardinal deacons preach the bishop those guys become the electors but before that it's important to us the people of Rome elect whoever and there is no process for that so essentially people bring a guy forward you know this guy and then they say okay you know we have a pope and they elect him um likewise Germanic uh kings are also let's say elected they're elected by the by The Warriors and so forth um and so and so electing the Bishops with something that would have been

(1:48:22) frankly the practice that continued generally speaking from Antiquity all the way through the Middle Ages and and Iris actually because I'm kind of a medievalist in ancient historian and so when I I'm when I've heard more you know when I found out more recently that modern day Church the present-day Catholic Church as opposed to the Latin church of the Middle Ages popes have the ability to just appoint the Bishops all around the whole world that is a crazy um a crazy whack-a-doodle power that never existed anyway in the Middle Ages because in the Middle Ages the local chapter let's say which is to say the

(1:48:59) the Elders of the community meeting together in the chapter they would either elect the bishop or the local monks for example amongst of Canterbury would all get together and they would elect who was going to be their Archbishop um and so in other words it's locally held or you know when it isn't working that way the local Lord would come in and say the king of England or the local Lord of of Duke of Aquitaine or something he would come in and say you guys have to elect my friend to be the thing but

(1:49:28) essentially there was a local election which would have been the way that was working all through ancient times through the Middle Ages and it's only in modern times that um that popes for example are appointing Bishops and so forth um why it fell out of favor and if you're a pope you want to be able to appoint everybody if you can um operation IV 85 says was the dedicay lost or omitted purposely by the up-and-coming more centralized types of Bishop priests versus the mendicant type because it's at odds with their own power and legitimacy yeah that

(1:50:03) could be so maybe um so maybe you know so there is a kind of a sort of apostolic Authority so the the those guys could have just as easily said well it does say that this is the teaching of the Apostles so they could say oh well this is the teaching that the apostles wrote um I mean the letter to Hebrews doesn't say anything of the kind the letter to Hebrews is simply an anonymous uh letter and people said well maybe Paul wrote it and it got in you know so this could have got in that reason too um and so it's possible that part of it here like you say has um

(1:50:38) you know this kind of focus on on prophets and apostles and things like that that may may have been uncomfortable for uh the Bishops that end up deciding what gets in the Bible or not uh so George says the fact that the recovered texts dates to the 11th century uh raises the question of who preserved it and why do we know how and why that happened so um so I don't know why that particular um Byzantine text you know so the text that got found like you say in the 19th century you know was a book that got re-copied essentially somebody in the

(1:51:18) um Middle Ages in Constantinople in the Greek Orthodox Church took a bunch of early Christian texts in Greek they made a new copy of them and bound them together into this manuscript which got you know preserved I don't know who did that or why why they did that but essentially lots of um lots of books kind of hang by a thread like that there are several books that only make it down to us in one particular manuscript and so essentially you're you luck out if you have a text and somebody especially like you say in the 11th or 12th century that's the key moment if somebody liked

(1:51:57) it you know because because there was they still had act access potentially to mouldering Old manuscripts that could have been preserved from uh before the fall of the West Roman Empire in this case the East Roman Empire never fell and so they have texts from the old archives and libraries and if you can get somebody in the 11th century to copy it for you it could make it to the present but in this case um this book made it other books didn't and it would be nice if um whoever this guy was who copied this one out also gave us for example the gospel of the

(1:52:30) ebonites or you know any other one of these lost texts that we would love to have uh landro writes many church leaders know one hopes uh the things that we cover tonight yet they continue to look at the Bible as a fixed collection that cannot be modified however some Protestant theologians today already use the Apocrypha as de facto scripture can uh the same change of attitude be extended to text like the data K within mainstream Christianity um so so I feel like it would be a really tough for mainstream Christianity

(1:53:09) because you know like when you're talking about the Protestant theologians making use of the Apocrypha well the Apocrypha is just text there's just Bible books that the Protestants took out of the Bible you know what I mean so in other words the Apocrypha that's the Bible as far as the Catholics and the Orthodox Church are concerned that they don't call it that the Catholics and Orthodox Church call that the the deuteron canonical texts of the Old Testament and so Protestants can read that if they want to or not they were the ones that got rid of it in terms of

(1:53:39) new additional books that have been found like the dedicate like the Gospel of Thomas and so forth Protestants are so fixated on the biblical Canon and they really in my opinion have gone to this place where they you know it's the sole source of authority and they and they no matter what they understand in terms of uh the historical criticism and everything else they are still wedded to this idea that this text is fell out of the sky as a Bible like this even though we know that's not the case and so um I think because of a a tendency among

(1:54:17) Protestants to worship the Bible adding texts to the Bible is kind of outside of their scope of anything that they want to do um and and again I don't think that the Catholics are in the mood for it either you know Catholics and Orthodox so so it only can fit into um uh little churches like mine that are not mainstream so so um so I'm perfectly happy we have an open canon in our tradition we we add new books of scripture and we add new scripture all the time to what we understand to be scripture and we

(1:54:52) theoretically also sometimes get rid of scripture we're thinking of getting rid of um a chapter of scripture in our next upcoming World Conference in April um so I think that there's opportunity to look at texts like this uh the reason why for me and Community of Christ I probably wouldn't add the dedicate is that it has a bunch of uh that thou shalt not list and it's got a bunch of stuff that would confuse people and I would probably if we maybe lopped that part off and only had the the middle part and we and we heavily

(1:55:25) annotated it you know so that people didn't take it as authoritative so the fact that it like for example says we've got to have um you communion every week and you should have closed communion well I disagree with both of those so we have communion once a month that's great I mean I don't think we need to change that to weekly and likewise um I don't like close communion so so anyway so I think we could have it as long as we understand that um that we shouldn't be we should understand it historically the way we

(1:55:53) should understand all of those kinds of texts so um so that concludes the question and answer portions uh once again I want to thank you for being part of these lectures and for part of this discussion we appreciate your contributions you can always make donations in the chats here like people have been doing we really appreciate that and you can always go to centerplace.

(1:56:24) ca our website and contribute there thanks again and we will see you next week when we talk about the Apostle John all the other Johns and the johannine the John community and all of the texts that come out of that community