20230117 Q&A

Question & Answer Session

(1:33:33) 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 u and they're very much written by different people because uh they use extremely different uh uh Greek writing styles. Um and so what St.

(1:33:58) Jerome says, one 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.

(1:34:24) And so probably what happened is Peter is talking to one secretary and that and when he's telling the kind of 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.

(1:34:41) 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 the letters reflect later um later ideas in Christianity than when Peter would have already been dead. And uh specifically, second Peter is one that we can say for sure is a um 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 pseudopigraphic text.

When and how did the tradition of confession appear? Is it only Christian?

(1:35:13) 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 dedicay because it is um it's suggesting that one of the things that you need to do to approach Eucharist is to reconcile yourself.

(1:35:44) So confess any sins that you 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. Um and so when does it develop? It develops already in the first century.

(1:36:02) And so that is a u 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 um I think it's probably a sacrament of the church in one of the sacraments confession and absolution uh in the Catholic tradition.

Are there any Christian denominations today which have tried to integrate the Didache into their practices?

(1:36:24) Uh Daryl, thank you for support Daryl Scott. Um, Daryl asks, "Are there any Christian denominations today which have tried to integrate the dedicay into their practices?" I don't think so. So, the dedicay was um 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 get don't get the impression that is as well known as it probably should be.

(1:36:55) 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 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.

(1:37:15) 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, um, a lot of these kind of ideas that already gotten put into place.

Did the Didache's rule about apostles staying one to two days reveal the author's possibly negative view of Paul?

(1:37:33) So, I don't know that anybody has kind of gone to the dedicay 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 so is the answer. Alexander uh Santos Anderson asks did uh the dedicay's rule about apostles staying one to two days reveal the uh author's possibly negative view of Paul who writes about staying at individual church communities for months or years.

(1:38:00) That's an interesting question. Um what I would say to that though is is no because um the dedicay included as we you probably might have written that before 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 um let them uh do that work by their trade.

(1:38:27) 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 at 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.

(1:38:46) I am I'm being a temp guy. I am not living on your tithing. 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

(1:39:24) and a cup or something like that, a begging bowl. Um and yet and and yet what would happen 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 philosoph 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 agura or something like that and and and is kind of phoning it in or whatever is not as

(1:39:55) is not being as serious about it. And so in that same way here maybe there are people that are 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 a on a they're lazing along.

How often should communion be held?

(1:40:13) 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 um some churches have communion every Sunday. Some churches do it only once a month.

(1:40:30) So yes. 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 the precept in the letters of Paul is is I think get together and celebrate the Lord's supper frequently.

(1:40:59) 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 um the New Testament doesn't include um a rule book like the dedicay. So, it doesn't tell you if you're gonna have communion, do it this way, do it every Sunday and and so forth.

(1:41:23) 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 dedicay kind of has. And so, lacking that answer, um, different Christian denominations have said, well, frequently, what does frequently mean? Well, maybe that means every week. Well, maybe that means every month.

What do the qualifying aspects of this document have in common with rabbinic Jewish approaches to practical aspects of practice?

(1:41:38) Maybe that means every quarter. So, frequently is, you know, is relative. And so, it depends on what people decide to do. Uh, Max Santanac says, "What in your opinion do the qualifying aspects of this document have in common with rabbitic 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 thou shalts and the thou shalt not and so forth the lists of things you should do and things that you shouldn't do. Um,

(1:42:23) when I was saying that that is maybe emerging out of a a Jewish document, um, I would say that that is not so that wouldn't be coming out of rabbitic Judaism. Rabbitic Judaism is um is only beginning to evolve at the same time that dedicay is being written. The dedicay is a very early document. Uh, the main rabbitic documents, they they look back to some very early teachers that would be contemporaries of Jesus and the author of the dedicay.

(1:42:51) In fact, it's all written much later, uh, written down later. And so, and so what it's emerging out of is other kinds of pre-rebinic second temple Judaism. And so, like I was saying, it's more more comparisons um, have been made. for example with like I say the documents about how to live uh according to the rules and precepts of the community of the Essen at Kuman.

(1:43:17) So the Dead Sea Scroll community which again would be a a pre-rebinic Jewish community as opposed to the more modern um rabbitic Judaism ideas um in terms of the qualifying aspects of the document. So, I think that that's part of a thing that Christians also don't um get about Jews. And in fact, um the New Testament sort of caricatures Pharisees.

(1:43:47) So, the Pharisee sect is sort of the um the proto group of rabbis that eventually evolves into rabbitic Judaism. But it's uh but it's caric 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 rebbitic Judaism.

(1:44:11) 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 been talking about then for you know 2,000 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

(1:44:47) 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 in that kind of a thing.

(1:45:01) 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 um 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 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 um a body of case law where you really you know now we have that wire and

(1:45:42) everything. In other words, people have kind of agreed what the new rule is based on all of that. Uh whereas um with Christianity and kind of doing things kind of by the spirit, you're supposed to kind of I think you 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 and a debate that it gets us to a consensus in terms of that building u way of how we how we follow precepts.

Does electing bishops imply direct democracy, and is that why it fell out of favor?

(1:46:11) Um so George says you must elect for yourself bishops and he says that implies direct democracy of the congregation. Is that perhaps the biggest change leading to a church leading to established church and why it fell out of favor? So so so elections um election doesn't necessarily imply direct democracy.

(1:46:36) Um uh there's a lot of elections that happen when you say election. So there's a lot of elections that happen in antiquity where um where election kind of happens by let's say acclamation. Um, you could almost even say that when a Roman a victorious Roman general's troops all acclaim that he is Caesar, acclaim him emperor, they are in in fact the troops are electing him to be Caesar and then they have to march back to Rome and and fight it out with the other guy who maybe is the rival emperor and and overthrow him and so forth. That's one

(1:47:13) 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 happen in the later middle ages when it starts to get restricted where the election happens and it's just the cardinals which is to say the local um deacons priests and bishops around the city of Rome the cardinal deacons priests and bishop

(1:47:50) those guys become the electors but for that it's important unless 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 um Germanic uh kings are also let's say elected.

(1:48:15) They're elected by the by the warriors and so forth. Um and so and so electing the bishops was something that would have been frankly the practice that continued generally speaking from antiquity all the way through the middle ages and and I was actually because I'm kind of a medievalist and an anti an ancient historian and so when I when 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 the Latin church of the middle ages popes have the ability to just appoint the bishops all

(1:48:46) around in the whole world. That is a crazy um a crazy whackadoodle 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 the elders of the community meeting together in the chapter they would either elect the bishop or the local monks for example monks of Canterbury would all get together and they would elect who was going to be their archbishop.

(1:49:13) 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 Aquitane or something, he would come in and say, "You guys have to elect my friend to be the the thing." But essentially, there was a local election, which would have been the way that was working all through ancient times through the Middle Ages.

Was the Didache lost or omitted purposely by centralized bishops due to power dynamics?

(1:49:35) And it's only in modern times that um, uh, that popes, for example, are appointing bishops and so forth. Um, why it fell out of favor? If you're a pope, you want to be able to appoint everybody if you can. Um, Operation Ivy 85 says, "Was the dedicay lost or omitted purposely by the up andcoming more centralized types of bishop priests versus the mendican type because it's at odds with their own power and legitimacy.

(1:50:03) " Yeah, that 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.

(1:50:23) 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, 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.

Who preserved the 11th-century text and why?

(1:50:50) Uh, so George says, "The fact that uh, the recovered text 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, um was a book that got recopied essentially.

(1:51:17) Somebody in the um middle ages in Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox Church um 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. Uh 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.

(1:51:43) 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 it you know because because there was they still had access potentially to moldering old manuscripts that could have been preserved from uh before the fall of the West Roman Empire.

(1:52:09) 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. Um, 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 Ebianites or, you know, any other one of these lost texts that we would love to have.

Can the acceptance of non-canonical texts like the Didache be extended within mainstream Christianity?

(1:52:36) Uh, Landro writes, "Many church leaders know, one hopes, uh, the things that we covered 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 texts like the dedicay within mainstream Christianity?" Um, so, so I feel like it would be really tough for mainstream Christianity.

(1:53:12) Um, because, um, you know, like when you're talking about the Protestant theologians making use of the Apocrypha, well, the Apocrypha is just text. Those are 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.

(1:53:27) That they don't call it that. The Catholics and Orthodox Church call that the the duter 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. uh in terms of new additional books that have been found like the dedicay like the gospel of Thomas and so forth Protestants are so fixated on the biblical cannon and they really in my opinion have gotten to this place where they you know it's the sole source of authority and they and they and no matter what they understand in terms of

(1:54:01) 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 Protestants to worship the Bible, adding text to the Bible is kind of outside of their scope of anything that they want to do.

(1:54:27) 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 cannon in our tradition. We we add uh new books of scripture and we add new scripture all the time to um what we understand to be scripture and we theoretically also sometimes get rid of scripture.

(1:54:54) We're thinking of getting rid of um uh 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 in community of Christ I probably wouldn't add the dedicay is that it has a bunch of uh that thou shalt not list and it's has a bunch of stuff that would confuse people and I would probably if we maybe locked that part off and only had the the middle part and we and we heavily annotated it you know so that people didn't take it

(1:55:27) 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.

(1:55:45) And likewise, um I don't like closed 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 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.

(1:56:09) Um we appreciate uh your contributions. You can always um make donations in the chats here like people have been doing. We really appreciate that and you can always go to centerplace.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 John's and the Johannine, the John community and all of the texts that come out of that community.