20240213 Q&A

Q&A Session

(1:27:15) Canonization process. And so I'm going to get a drink of water while Leandro assembles some of your questions. Well, I want to start by thanking everybody who has supported the platform on PayPal and other platforms, and so that includes Carol Trojanowski, Gayen Dasta, Henry Anderson...

(1:27:43) I'm sorry, Harry Anderson, Mary Cameron, David Grabowski, Charles Reynolds, Ariel Tiara Molina, Katherine Brian, Eleanor Ceki, Rosie Sher, Donald Stedman, Ray Paul, Ralph Lub Cooker, Eric Nordquist, Morris Zimmer, Mary Layman, Jason Bishop, Lloy Duza, Rachel Fornier, Derek Hans, Amanda...

Jeff infj asks...

(1:28:09) Palton, Paige, Sha-Ay, Ron, Ron Wagner, L Yung, and Mark Long. That is a lot. Thank you so much. Okay, here's some questions. Jeff INFJ asks, "Boy, what other resources, books online about this subject, would you suggest for further study?" It's a pretty vast topic.

(1:28:40) There are, one of my go-to websites for New Testament stuff is called Early Christian Writings. And you just Google "Early Christian Writings" and it lists all the details of the books that made it in and not in the...

(1:29:01) New Testament, and it has good links to summaries of the scholarship and good links to any free translations that exist online. Bart Ehrman has very accessible books on the canonization also, so I think that books like, probably, "Lost New Testament"...

(1:29:25) There are a number of books, anyway, that I don't remember offhand, but I definitely recommend him for that. Since I was a teenager, I have this collection that's called "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha," and it's a two-volume set.

(1:29:46) It's fun to just... it has all of the scholarship at the beginning. That's where I always go to when I'm doing any of this. The Old Testament commentaries, and that has...

nadav Kravitz asks...

(1:30:02) The whole translated text of all of these books that were left out. It's really interesting stuff. Darl Scott, thank you so much for your support. Nadav Kravitz asks, "Isn't it theologically problematic that Jesus is ignorant of the genuine provenance of scripture?"

(1:30:22) It's only theologically problematic depending on your understanding of the relationship between the historical Jesus and Christ. From my perspective, when we study history and we see textual criticism, we see how this arises.

(1:30:46) We understand that the historical Jesus, who is a historical figure, is distinct from, but inspired Christians to understand the theological idea of Christ. So, no, it's not problematic for me that the historical Jesus is not aware, for example, when we quote from...

(1:31:09) Daniel, even though Daniel is not written by Daniel and so on. We've had whole other long lectures on the historical Jesus, and I think in some of those I've tried to outline theologically the...

(1:31:26) Proposition that I would make between the historical Jesus that we can learn about in history classes and who inspired the stories about what becomes the sacred story of scripture in the Christian tradition, which are part of Christian...

(1:31:48) Worship. So, the Jesus Christ of scripture, and how from those scriptures and other visionary insights and theological insights, Christians developed their view of the Eternal God, seeing God as a prism through three persons, the second of whom is the Christ of...

(1:32:11) Theology, who Christians understand as God made manifest among us, fully human and fully divine. So, for some Christians, because they're literalists and they're really focused on this or that historical thing, it...

El Yung says...

(1:32:31) Is going to be very problematic for their viewpoint because many of these things aren't the case historically. El Yung says, "Do you think that we will find the lost Book of Q sometime soon? And do you think it's more Essene-leaning?" I don't think we'll find it sometime...

(1:32:54) Soon. It's a book that I would like to find; that would be nice. I feel like it's unlikely that it's going to be found. I mean, it's not impossible; this is a desert area, so it's always possible that somebody took a bunch of scrolls and...

(1:33:11) Put them in a jar and buried them out in the desert in Egypt, and they're still waiting to be dug up. There's a lot of lamenting that the Library of Alexandria burned down, and it burned down so many times in history, actually.

(1:33:26) Part of the real issue with the Library of Alexandria is, at a certain point, an institution has to constantly be funded in order to constantly copy the new texts. But instead of worrying about whether it was going to burn down or not, if somebody...

(1:33:42) Had just taken a bunch of those and put them in a jar and buried them twenty miles out into the desert in Egypt, then we would have them all. Then we wouldn't have to worry about the copying to preserve it. So, I don't think it's...

(1:33:57) Likely we'll find it. In terms of it being more Essene-like, there's an idea that John the Baptist and his disciples maybe emerged out of an...

(1:34:19) Essene-like community. We know what Q looks like; we don't have to speculate what Q is like. It's been reconstructed very clearly, and actually, there's been lots of studies that are done on the hypothetical text.

(1:34:38) I don't know that it's more Essene-like, but there's an interesting speculation about connections between Essenes as a precursor to some of the early Christians. Tabuk Cat, thank you for your support. Josh Bedford asks, acknowledging the diversity of the...

Josh Bedford asks...

(1:34:57) New Testament having Jamesian, Johannine, and Pauline traditions, what do I think about the rightness of the gatekeeping of the Gnostics? Why the Gnostic stuff got left out? I think it's unfortunate that that...

(1:35:17) Happened. You're absolutely right; we have some pretty distinct traditions. Besides the Jamesian, we also have the Matthean. James's church and the Matthew church are both...

(1:35:38) Law-focused, focused on Law and continuing adherence to Law, whereas Pauline is pretty against it. Coming out of what becomes the original Gospel traditions of the Synoptics—Mark, Q, Matthew, and Luke—those are all pretty similar.

(1:36:03) And then the Johannine community just has a completely different perspective. If we were to find the Gospel of John today and it hadn't been part of Christianity, it would never get accepted because it presents a perspective...

(1:36:16) On Jesus that is way too different than the other ones. In that sense, keeping the Gnostics out isn't fair. On the other hand, a proto-Gnostic text like Thomas, which draws upon...

(1:36:36) Probably an early sayings gospel that isn't too far different from Q and maybe preserves some very early stuff, elaborates pretty fast. The Gnostic cosmology and mythology become so alien to the rest of the tradition that it's...

(1:37:00) Almost its own religion at a certain point. It's housed by people that are continuing to be within the proto-Orthodox church, but a lot of the ideas are so different it would be difficult to have it. I guess it could...

(1:37:20) Continue in the same way that there's a Jewish mysticism that most mainline Jews don't have to worry about. In Islam, Sufism is cross-traditional; a lot of the different mainline...

(1:37:42) Sunnis and even Shiites don't like it, but it is able to continue to exist. So, yeah, maybe it would have been possible for Gnosticism to exist independently within the tradition, and it's in that sense a shame that it...

(1:37:59) Didn't get to stay. Obviously, every time I talk about the Gnostics dying out, people say, "No, we're still here." There are Gnostics, there are new Neo-Gnostics. I...

Winston Barz says...

(1:38:11) Shouldn't say that; it sounds too much like New Age. There are new Gnostics in a revival. Winston Barz says, "Is it agreed that the Catholic Church canonized the Bible?" Yes. At a certain point, I said that after...

(1:38:31) The Synod of Hippo Regius, which is a provincial council that St. Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo, held, he canonized the Bible. He's part of the Latin church, which is the Catholic church, one of the heirs of the original church.

(1:38:52) After he canonized the Bible, his code's decree was ratified by the Council of Carthage, which is also part of the Latin church, the Catholic church. Then, from there, two later popes issued decrees within...

Rock Tapper Robin says...

(1:39:12) The next couple decades that said, "Yes, we agree that's the canonical list." So they canonized the Bible in the fourth and fifth century. Rock Tapper Robin says, "How many books were actually translated? If each scholar had one, maybe they could have done the job..."

(1:39:34) Fast? Yeah. So, Rock Tapper, this is a legend. It's not whether or not they could have done it; it's that these two stories are anachronistic and late. The stories are written with an apologetic intent. The goal of the story is to say the Greek translation...

(1:39:53) Should be viewed as just as authoritative as the Hebrew original. That ended up being understood to be the case for Christians in the Greek-speaking church who continue to use the Septuagint as the text of the Bible.

(1:40:10) It's not whether it could happen or not. The way the story says, God tells them in their heart what to do. If God is telling you, of course you can do it in that amount of time. But the idea of it is that...

(1:40:28) Each scholar is just doing the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those five books, and they're sitting in a room alone for 72 days. I think you could potentially write out the whole thing in that amount of time. I think that's very doable.

hnm says...

(1:40:44) Yes, they could have done it. It's not that this is impossible to have done; it's that the story is anachronistic and late, written with an apologetic intent. HNM says, "I don't understand how, if Jesus was unanimously viewed as God by all these Christian..."

(1:41:08) Groups, why did one of the earliest groups, the Ebionites, deny his divinity?" He's not unanimously viewed as God by all these Christian groups. There's a diversity of understanding how Jesus is. He might be viewed as divine in...

(1:41:31) This, but there's a difference between saying Jesus is divine in some way—the same way an angel is divine—and saying that Jesus is somehow God, a second person in a trinity of one God, which is what Christians in the following centuries develop.

(1:41:52) Some of the groups didn't find that at all. The Ebionites might have been one of these. They understood Jesus to have been a regular human being who lived a perfect life, and then at the moment of, well, it could...

(1:42:13) Have been at some moment, but let's say at the moment of his crucifixion and then his resurrection, he conquers death as a god-given miracle. God raises him up and seats him at his right hand, and now he is divine, in the same way that in the Book of Enoch, at the end...

(1:42:33) Of the book, Enoch has had the mortal parts of him divested and now he has become an angel. In a later Book of Enoch, he becomes the angel Metatron. He is a holy being that is part of God's court. For some of these Christian groups, they might have...

(1:42:56) Understood Jesus that way, as opposed to understanding him as being God, a second person of the one God. Soaring Bum and M, thank you for your support. Conan the Librarian asks, "Does this channel like Mario Bingo's work?" If you'll have to...

Conan The Librarian asked...

(1:43:24) Send it to me if it's another scholar who I'm forgetting. Okay, so Leandra is saying it's another scholar, and I'd have to look at it. I don't know; I haven't read it offhand. Austin Lewis asks, "What does Marcion think Paul meant..."

Austin Lewis asks...

(1:43:48) When he said Jesus lived according to the scriptures?" Yeah, it's a good point. This is a problem with Marcionism—it's hard to rip the Old Testament. This is a problem later with Gnosticism too, which we...

(1:44:16) Also saw the Old Testament as an evil God, the material God who is not the same as the true God, the spiritual God. The problem with that is that the other New Testament writers, including...

(1:44:34) Paul and Luke, are very invested in the Septuagint text, in the Old Testament text. It's hard to do this thing that Marcion wanted to do of ripping all of that away because there are going to be quotations that are...

(1:45:00) Not going to make any sense now, like Jesus having lived according to scriptures. Indeed, almost all of the references aren't going to make any sense. So it's much better to not throw it all away. My policy on canonization is that...

(1:45:19) I just want as wide a canon as possible. I don't think we should be deleting it. I think the reason why people want tiny canons is that they want to make the Bible perfect and not full of flaws and errors, and not the product of a...

(1:45:36) Human response to the divine, which is what it is—humans writing it. They want to instead make it this kind of perfect text that you can then worship as an idol. I think that lots of people have fallen into that path. So, yeah, I think that's a...

Stephanie asks...

(1:45:52) Problem that Marcion has, as you pointed out very well, Austin. Aaron Rivera, thank you for your support. Noth Empt, thank you for your support. Oh, Stephanie Sessi, hi Stephanie! Stephanie asks, "Does John know of any source that examines the books left..."

(1:46:12) Out of the Bible in light of the documentary hypothesis? Since it would be weird if only J, E, D, P, and the redactor made it into the canon." So, yeah, it's not only J, E, D, P, and the...

(1:46:36) Redactor that made it into the Torah—the five books of Moses which the documentary hypothesis is focused on. There are lots and lots of other pre-biblical texts, pre-Torah texts, that the redactor or an earlier redactor...

(1:47:01) Various editors at different times are pulling in. There are these fragments where there'll be things like the Song of Moses or the Book of Generations, where there is maybe an older text that gets embedded. There's...

(1:47:17) An Edomite King list, a bunch of different things that are getting pulled into that, that are not simply original to J, E, D, and P. The reason why there might be alternate texts that didn't get pulled in that still are part of the...

(1:47:39) Bible elsewhere, you know, that might be just as old. Certainly some of the earliest prophetic writings are older than any of those Torah parts, and they just didn't get pulled in. Then I think that...

(1:47:58) The way... I don't think of a scholar who writes it, but essentially there's a bunch of contention about exactly when the redaction is happening. The idea is that, in fact, there's way more that was left on the cutting room floor than...

(1:48:15) Actually made it in. For example, the reason why the Exodus myth is so central to the Torah is not because it doesn't date back to the first temple period, but the reason why such a story is so relevant to the returning exiles who were in Babylon and...

(1:48:46) Have now returned to the land, the same way that the Exodus is talking about people who've been slaves in Egypt and have now returned to the land. The reason why that is so much the focus of that group is that's what appealed to them because they had...

(1:49:03) Just done that. There had been maybe lots more text that didn't make it into the Torah that the redactor left out because it wasn't relevant to their experience the way that Exodus story was. Why would it happen?

(1:49:20) Initially there's not a lot of copies of this thing. Initially I think it's completely possible, for example, that the chronicler, the person who's writing First and Second Chronicles, which is a redaction and a...

(1:49:39) Reworking and a sweetening up of the deuteronomic books—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Samuel, Kings, Kings—that same text is simply reworked as Chronicles. The chronicler is hoping that those other books just disappear in...

(1:49:59) The same way that the author of Matthew and the author of Luke is hoping that Mark and Q just disappear. We end up having Mark; Q disappears. These other source texts, the understanding is that they disappear because there's so few...

Jake Decker says...

(1:50:14) Copies of these, and the various royal archives are all gone and so on. Dave Anderson, thank you for your support. I want to thank Francesca Maria for donating on the website. Jake Decker says, "What are some of the examples in Daniel that make scholars think it was..."

(1:50:35) Written a lot later than it claims to be? Are there anachronisms?" Absolutely. We have a whole lecture on Daniel as a pious fraud, but I'll just make it brief. Essentially, Daniel includes a lot of visions looking forward into the future. Daniel sees...

(1:50:53) Um, you know, sees the writing on the wall—it's one of the famous ones. He sees the big statue that has the different metals—gold and silver, all the way down to muddy feet and so on. He sees all the beasts that are coming one after the...

(1:51:14) Other out of the sea. There's this succession of history visions predictive of the future. The interesting thing about these is Daniel supposedly is living during the Babylonian captivity and he's talking to Nebuchadnezzar, the King of...

(1:51:34) Babylon, and they're having these visions of the future. Well, those visions track perfectly. He's able to predict everything that's going to happen all the way down into the period of time when he predicts Alexander the Great, he predicts...

(1:51:51) Cyrus the Persian, Alexander and his generals, and finally all the way down to Antiochus IV Epiphanes and his desecration of the temple in Jerusalem. Then, suddenly, after predicting everything perfectly, it just goes...

(1:52:10) Completely off the rails. It predicts that Antiochus is going to die in Judea between the river and the coast, and instead he dies off in Persia. It just goes off the rails; the end of the world doesn't happen. All those kind of things.

(1:52:25) And so, because in just very thinly veiled references, the author of Daniel is talking about his exact time in history and he predicts it perfectly all the way up and down to the point when he's writing, and then he gets it totally wrong after the time he's...

(1:52:41) Writing, that's how we can date it very, very precisely. Oh boy, well, so we've had 185 likes so far. If you are here and you want to keep helping us, you can help us reach 200 likes. Like I said before, that really affects the YouTube algorithm.

K Tempest Bradford says...

(1:53:00) People get shown it, and so it's nice when that happens. K. Tempest Bradford says, "Where does the Acts of Paul and Thecla fall into the 'why kept out' matrix?" So, there's a couple places. I mean, it's late, and so I think that most people...

(1:53:25) There are a lot of church fathers who would not think that it was authentic. It's also a great romantic Hellenistic romance novel. It's filled with action and adventure, but there's a lot more...

(1:53:43) Fantastical magic stuff, more miracles than are believable. I think that those are the reasons why it's kept out, although St. Thecla is still revered as a saint in the church and there's a shrine to her in Turkey and at a...

(1:54:02) Tomb or burial place. It's not that the stories didn't continue to be read and felt as important, but I think that's why they're kept out—because they are too fanciful and too unlikely to date all the way back to Paul. Everyone is asking for a lecture on...

(1:54:23) Thecla. Okay, well, I think that's a good one. I think we should have a lecture on Paul and Thecla. Michael Lose says, "Is the Canon dependent on the language—Greek or Latin—or was it defined in Greek and just translated?" No, it's not dependent on...

Michael lose says...

(1:54:43) The language. It's an interesting question and a really interesting difference among the Abrahamic religions. In its present form—not second temple Judaism, but Rabbinic Judaism—Rabbinic Judaism studies in Hebrew and...

(1:55:04) Aramaic, the two languages of the Hebrew Bible, and then also of the Mishnah and the Talmud and the rest of the early writings of the Rabbis. This is done in Hebrew and Aramaic. The whole religious training is like, when you're a kid, you...

(1:55:28) Go to Hebrew school. That's really central to... you have a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah where in front of the congregation, in front of the synagogue, you read a Torah portion on your Coming of Age day. That makes you come...

(1:55:47) Of age and be a full part of the congregation. Studying the original language is critically important for Rabbinic Judaism in modern times. Likewise, in Islam, the Quran is only...

(1:56:04) Valid in its original Arabic. It's not the Quran anymore once you translate it. It is understood theologically to be eternal in that medieval Arabic language. Anytime it's translated, you only have the sense of the Quran, not the Quran anymore. Christianity...

(1:56:24) Is exactly the opposite. We do not have the original language teachings of Jesus at all; everything we have is in translation right away. The Gospel is preached in every tongue, every language. It is not critical...

(1:56:43) That it is in Greek or in Latin or any other language. It's only important to know Latin or Greek or Hebrew in order to be able to study the text in terms of its historical background. You understand the context.

wandering Bishop says...

(1:57:05) Wandering Bishop says, "I understand biblical primacy is a recent thing. To what extent was the Canon regarded as more authoritative than other things the church used for instruction, like art or literature?" To your point, Wandering Bishop, the...

(1:57:28) Idea that all authority in Christianity rests solely upon scripture is a doctrine of Protestantism. That is a modern doctrine from the time of the Protestant Reformation onward. The place of primacy of the Bible in modern Christianity is...

(1:57:49) Dependent on the fact that everybody's literate now, that we have a printing press. Everybody's able to have a copy of the Bible in their own hands and read it for themselves. That's totally different from anything in the past. It was a source of authority, of course...

(1:58:04) Before, and it was in the hands of the clergy, who had to study a foreign language—Latin or in the East, Greek. They might have been native Greek speakers, but in most places they had to study a liturgical language in order to even...

(1:58:21) Read the Bible, and they had to do a bunch of other study in order to access it. There were other sources of authority, including tradition and lots of other components of the Christian life that were easily as important.

(1:58:41) As you point out, there's other kinds of things like art, music, certainly chanting and singing. The chants were incredibly important. And then, of course, the rituals—being able to participate in the sacramental life. All of those things have been historically as important or even more...

alas Cav asks...

(1:59:01) Important than the Bible in much of the Christian community through much of history. Alas Cav asks, "Did they just not get the Maccabees in Ethiopia, or did they decide to reject them?" If we might still have that chart up...

(1:59:23) There's a couple of the Maccabees books that are not in the Ethiopian canon. There are instead three or four Maccabees books that are Ethiopian only. The Ethiopian church has their own different Maccabees books, and that's why they don't have in their canon...

(1:59:43) The Maccabees books that are in the canon of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Soaring Bum, thank you for your support. Soaring Bum says, "This is a vote for more history podcasts! I loved your First Crusade video." I'm glad to hear that.

(2:00:05) I really did that one as a trial balloon because I want to do more history ones, but I wasn't sure anybody was going to watch it. Sometimes you get into a topical rut and people say, "We want to know more about Enoch, the...

(2:00:22) Book of Enoch." You can only do so many lectures on that Book of Enoch, though. I like if we can branch out more into history, and I'm glad you support that and that you liked the First Crusade video. We'll...

melis says...

(2:00:35) Do more of those. Melis says, "So is it just good to read all books no matter what, if it's canonical or not?" Yeah, I think it's good. I don't think that there's any problem reading books, even books that have ideas that I would find not helpful...

(2:00:57) Or bad, or that I would reject. I don't think it hurts to read them; you just have to understand them. More exposure to more ideas is better and then it allows you to have a bigger context from which to make judgments.

(2:01:16) In terms of the canon, the essential component or meaning of canon in a Christian context is that scripture is read in church services as part of what is called worship in the...

(2:01:40) Christian context. There's particular books drawn from the sacred story, but I'll say we do quote more widely outside of just biblical texts in my congregation than even other congregations in my denomination.

(2:01:59) In the same place in the service, we've quoted before from Origen, or from Augustine, or from Julian of Norwich—important Christian thinkers throughout...

Empress goddess spiritual says...

(2:02:18) Time, or people who aren't Christian also who are quoted. Empress Goddess Spiritual says, "Do you think the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden so that the Catholic Church could not get them and destroy them?" No, I think they were hidden because the Romans...

(2:02:39) Wouldn't destroy them. There's a revolt that happened. The Qumran community, I think, gathered everything up and buried everything for safekeeping, and they hoped that they would come back after the Roman...

(2:02:59) Jewish war. Instead, the community was destroyed and they never did come back. This was pagan Romans, you know, so it wasn't the Catholic church; it was the Roman Empire who was trying to put down a rebellion. Zulu Zit, thank you for your...

(2:03:19) Support. You say that these are all history videos, but I too vote for more history videos. No, I agree. Some of these, I think, focusing specifically on scripture and the...

(2:03:34) Development of particular texts of scripture, and then sometimes we are doing historical context specifically as opposed to focusing on any one text. I understood that from the context of the previous request. John Phelps says, "Did you hear about the latest..."

John Phelps says...

(2:03:53) Virtual unrolling of the scrolls of Herculaneum, preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius? I understand that there are thousands, maybe more, to be excavated." I had heard that some of the scrolls preserved in Herculaneum had been unrolled and that they had gotten some things off...

(2:04:14) Of them. They looked pretty scarily fragmentary because these are things being pulled out from a volcanic eruption. Nevertheless, I had not heard that there may be thousands more to be excavated, and if...

(2:04:28) That's the case, then yeah, maybe there's a lot of texts that we're going to have. I'm not holding out high hopes for additional Christian and Jewish texts, but out of those, we're going to get a lot of Greek...

(2:04:42) Texts, but also maybe some more really important Roman texts from the late Republic and an early Imperial period. That'd be pretty amazing if we could recover some of those lost texts. Even just as important, we'll probably get a lot...

(2:05:01) Of stuff about everyday life. Normally people write on things that don't get copied because it's only relevant to everyday life. That's one of the social history things that we learned from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Betsy mcgoverin says...

(2:05:17) It's important because of it preserving regular life. Betsy McGovern says, "Why is it that so many Christians think it is the Incarnate Word of God when the actual history is so available?" I'm taking from context you mean the Bible—why...

(2:05:42) Christians think that the Bible itself is the Incarnate Word of God. My perspective as a Christian pastor is that this is a confusion that lots of Christians have. We talk about the Bible, and people read it and they say, "Now, this is...

(2:05:58) The Word of God." According to the Bible, the Word of God is Christ, the Logos, which is Greek for Word of God, the second person of the Trinity. That's the Word of God. Scripture is a human response to revelation that...

(2:06:19) The church canonized. As we just saw, there were lots of different texts that are individual human responses to revelation, or in some cases, humans who are also engaging in a little bit of pious fraud by pretending that they are people that...

(2:06:39) They're not. And then those are all coming together in what ends up being ultimately a fairly arbitrary collection because the number one criterion used for both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament was antiquity—often which was, it turns...

(2:06:59) Out, pretended antiquity or pretended authority. The Books of Moses aren't written by Moses, the Gospel of Matthew isn't written by Matthew, Second Peter isn't written by Peter, and so forth. As a result of that...

(2:07:16) Because that was a major criterion for why it gets in the Bible, we ultimately can't understand the collection as fitting reasonable criteria. It becomes therefore a little bit arbitrary. Instead of worshiping...

(2:07:34) The text as if the text was God, and therefore creating an idol for ourselves, Christians should in my view be focused on the second person—the Word of God, Christ. That's just my own personal theological...

Ron Wagner says...

(2:07:57) Perspective. Ron Wagner says, "Did Joseph Smith consider adding the Apocrypha to the inspired version of the Bible?" I think he considered it and rejected it. He has a note on the Apocrypha that there are many fine teachings to be...

(2:08:20) Found here, but that it shouldn't be part of the canon. He also asks, "Did Ambrose of Milan, the powerful bishop who dominated over Theodosius the Great, have anything to do with the formation of the..."

(2:08:41) Bible?" Ambrose was certainly amazingly influential; he converted Augustine, and Augustine is the guy who ends up presiding over the first church council to actually ratify what the canon ends up being.

(2:09:03) Whether or not Ambrose had a direct relationship in Bible formation, he certainly indirectly did since he had an effect on Augustine. All right, so then we'll wrap up. There's a lot of wrap-up questions...

(2:09:28) We're still here, don't worry. Jeff INFJ says, "In light of books both left out and some left in, perhaps with some scrutiny, as a pastor do you use a list of books in your pastorship per se?"

(2:09:47) Again, I don't think there's a problem with books just because they got in even under false pretenses—that they're pseudepigraphal or that they...

(2:10:09) Have problematic theology in parts of them. I think we can understand them within their context and make use of them in church. I disagree with a lot of things that the various Old Testament and New Testament authors have as some of their...

(2:10:31) Central focus. We've talked before about being literal apocalypticists, thinking that the end of the world is going to happen literally sometime in the first century. People like Paul thought that, the author of Mark thought that, and John the...

(2:10:49) Revelator thought that. In all three of those cases, those guys were wrong. It didn't happen. That's an error on them. I'm also not a literal apocalypticist. Despite the fact that the Book of...

(2:11:06) Revelation is filled with apocalyptic visions, some of which are very bloody—the destruction of the world and this kind of thing—there's also paired with that all kinds of visions for a new world that...

(2:11:24) Is representative of the fully peaceable Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. It's a vision of that, and it's visually very appealing. For example, there's the great spiritual song "When the Saints Go Marching In"—I want to be in that...

(2:11:52) Grand old number. That is drawing upon the Book of Revelation. The "grand old number" is the 144,000, which shouldn't be interpreted literally in Revelation, but nevertheless is this idea of liberation for slaves and African-American people drawing...

(2:12:16) From that kind of imagery. So even though there's problems with a lot of these books, I don't 'X' them from my own personal canon list as a pastor. I'm actually very much against deleting stuff out of the canon. We just have to...

rain Weber says...

(2:12:31) Study it, understand it, and have a lot of footnotes and annotations so that we can use scripture responsibly. Rain Weber says, "What distinction do you see between the scriptures and the Word of God? Does one reference an oral tradition that later became scripture when it was written..."

(2:12:53) Down?" I've defined in a previous answer that when talking about the Word of God capitalized, in Christianity the Word of God is Christ. In Islam, the word of God is the Quran.

(2:13:14) Christ is the Logos, the Word of God. The theological distinction between Christ and the scriptures is that the scriptures are texts that human beings—prophets, priests, scribes, evangelists—wrote down, hopefully in response to divine...

(2:13:40) Revelation. Nevertheless, they are limited by their own time and place in history. If they're from 2,000 years ago, they are not aware of a lot of the important philosophical ideas that have evolved in the last 2,000 years.

(2:14:02) They are limited by their time and place. For us to make use of these scriptures, we have to study them in light of their context and limitations. We also have to be aware that there're humans that are arguing with each other...

(2:14:21) Inviting us to enter into dialogue. The scriptures then can be used to point us to the Word of God—the divine which is Christ. Your reference about an oral tradition that later became scripture: there are...

(2:14:40) Components that exist in scripture. All scripture is what's canonized, and what was canonized is stuff that's written down. Some of the things that are written down do record what had been oral traditions. Much of the...

(2:15:00) Gospel text, the sayings of Jesus, are going to have gone through an oral tradition process that at the time wouldn't have been scripture; it would have been testimony. Then at a certain point when it's written down, it becomes scripture and after it's...

kaiwan F says...

(2:15:16) Canonized. Kaiwan F. says, "If by chance a hitherto unknown text were found that could definitely be dated to the first century, what are the chances that it would be adopted into the Canon, and how would that happen?" We have a bunch of first-century texts that...

(2:15:36) Have been recovered, like the Didache. The Didache is an important text because it gives us early insights into ecclesiology, how the different priesthood...

(2:15:56) Offices function—what it means to be an apostle, what it means to be a deacon, and also how you're supposed to perform baptisms. Some of these are like a guidebook or an FAQ for early...

(2:16:13) Christianity. The chances that it would be adopted into the canon in a big church like the Catholic Church, I think, is essentially nil. I think they're all very fixated on the canon...

(2:16:31) Being very closed, even though as recently as the Protestant Reformation they opened the hood on it and ripped a bunch of books out. My church is very different; we are prepared to add things to the canon. The way it...

(2:16:45) Would work is we have a church council on the model of the ancient church councils, just within our own denomination. It's a World Conference we have every three years, and the World Conference is allowed to add stuff to the canon.

(2:17:00) This would be done through prayerful reflection, deciding, "Should this be considered part of the scriptures? Is God calling us to add this to our body of inspired counsel that should lead the..."

(2:17:21) Church?" The church has also pulled some things out of the canon in the past and proposed taking more things out. Again, I generally oppose taking stuff out, but wouldn't be opposed to putting more stuff in depending on...

rock Tapper Robin says...

(2:17:35) What we're talking about. Rock Tapper Robin says, "Did the decree of Theodosius I in 381 imposing uniformity have any influence?" Yes. Essentially, Christianity goes from being a tiny minority religion that faces...

(2:18:04) Occasional persecution by the Roman government to suddenly having the Roman Emperor become a major patron and ultimately a member of the Christian community. It's still a minority, but now receiving lavish imperial patronage. Constantine also...

(2:18:24) Issues a decree of universal tolerance, so all religions are tolerated—except Christian heresies. All non-Christian religions are tolerated, and Christianity within itself can persecute what the leaders of the imperial sponsored church consider a...

(2:18:46) Heresy. Then, within a few generations, it goes from being a minority religion sponsored by the government that is tolerant of other religions to a state religion that is intolerant to...

(2:19:09) Other religions. That has a major effect, and that's why Christianity ended up winning. To this day, the fact that it had become the state religion of the Roman Empire is why Christianity is the biggest religion in the...

James Sweeney says...

(2:19:27) World today. Other big world religions like Islam also were state religions, and that's one of the reasons why they got as big as they are. James Sweeney says—thank you for your support—"What are your thoughts about..."

(2:19:45) Denominations who use supplementary material as commentary on the Bible, such as publications like the 'Watchtower'? Is it an attempt to create new scripture, the way there's new scripture in Mormonism or the Talmud for Judaism?"

(2:20:06) I don't think it's always like making new scripture. I think it's important for denominations to be able to speak to members in the present day. I think the problem with having a...

(2:20:31) Closed canon that has been fixed ever since the fourth or fifth century—but based on texts that were all written by the 2nd century—means that the texts are increasingly out of touch with the present reality. The more you...

(2:20:51) Have to continuously go back. For New Testament writings, you have to constantly be talking about the historical context of first century CE Judea and Galilee. That is an increasingly alien...

(2:21:10) Lifestyle. So, I do think that it's important to have ongoing communication so that you can have relevance in the present day. That doesn't mean... I wouldn't probably like almost anything that's being written in the 'Watchtower,' and I...

(2:21:28) Also don't agree with the kind of commentary that's coming out of the LDS church in Utah's publications, but I appreciate that you have to have current stuff. I think in some of the cases those are treated as authoritative to an...

(2:21:48) Extent, and I think that's sort of normal. The Anglican Church has a 'Book of Common Prayer' that is almost like an extra book of scripture. There's a bunch of additional things that happen that become almost...

(2:22:07) Like scripture. An example in almost all of Christianity is the hymnal. People may not have read most of the books of the Bible or be particularly aware of different theological viewpoints, but they're much more likely to have imbibed what the...

unrecognized Talent says...

(2:22:26) Religion is about by singing hymns. The hymns are accomplishing that kind of goal. Unrecognized Talent says, "Were books ripped out from the Catholic Bible during the Protestant reformations? If so, which ones?" Yes. The Catholic Bible, the...

(2:22:47) Latin Western Christian Bible included the books that Protestants call the Apocrypha, the books that Catholics call the deuterocanonical books. Those are the books that are from the Catholic or the Latin Bible. When the Protestants read...

Tana asks...

(2:23:21) The Jewish Bible and they saw, "Oh, well the Jewish Bible doesn't have all of these books." The books that were not in the Jewish Bible were in the Catholic Bible; those are the books that the Protestants ripped out. Tana asks, "How did John get..."

(2:23:37) Involved with this channel?" Well, we originally founded... I have to step all the way back to 2013 when I started to work for this congregation. The congregation felt the need to have a renewal plan. Part of that plan was we...

(2:24:01) Were at a big old building that didn't suit anybody's needs anymore. It was outsized for the congregation and we couldn't do anything in it, and that had been sold. So we needed to downsize to have something that would be appealing to people in the 21st...

(2:24:18) Century, so that we could actually continue to be relevant in this time and place. So we built this facility here in downtown Toronto—Toronto Centre Place. One of the goals of Toronto Centre Place was to do online ministries. One of...

(2:24:35) The online ministries is... we said, "Well, what could we actually do that people would find interesting and might want to participate in?" I more or less said, "Well, I have had all of this background and training in academia." One of the...

(2:24:54) Things I was potentially going to do at the beginning of my career was to become a history professor. This is something that I'm very familiar with—assembling academic information that's hard to digest and putting it together into...

(2:25:11) Easy to understand slides and trying to help people understand it without having to wade through very complex academic journals. I said, "Since I know how to do that, maybe I'll do that and maybe people want..."

(2:25:29) To come." And that's how we started the channel. I'm glad that you have come; I'm glad that that has seemed to work out. As we conclude here, I'll just say: don't forget to like and subscribe and share the video. We appreciate all the donations you've...

(2:25:44) Done. You can consider doing that at our website, centerplace.ca/donate. Next week we're going to be smashing the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Maybe I'm going to get a prop because I want to smash them. Leandro says no. All right, all...

(2:25:58) Right, well then I'll just say [Laughter], goodbye.