There’s a common myth that Martin Luther cut out seven books of the Old Testament as a way to remove biblical support for Roman Catholic doctrines. In reality the early church disputed whether to include the “deuterocanon” or “apocrypha” from the Old Testament Scriptures and this debate carried on until the Council of Trent in 1545. So why did the Reformers reject books like 1-2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and Wisdom of Solomon, not to mention additional chapters of both Esther and Daniel? And how does recent scholarship on this issue get to the bottom of this dispute? John Meade From Phoenix Seminary joins us to shed light on this controversy by looking at early church canon lists and little known facts about the Reformers, Trent, Augustine, Jerome, and the significance of the collection of OT Greek translations called the “Septuagint”.
Show Notes
John’s Books:
Scribes and Scripture: https://a.co/d/eW0vPYT
The Biblical Canon Lists From Early Christianity: https://a.co/d/ettaa2R
Support us on Patreon
Website: thatllpreach.io
[00:00:00] There's a common myth that Martin Luther cut out seven books of the Old Testament as a way to remove biblical support for Roman Catholic
[00:00:06] doctrines that he didn't like.
[00:00:08] But in reality, the early church disputed whether to include these books from the Old Testament scriptures and this debate actually carried on until the Council of Trent in
[00:00:17] 1545. So why did the reformers reject books like First and Second Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and Wisdom of Solomon? Not to mention
[00:00:25] additional chapters of both Esther and Daniel. And how does recent scholarship on this issue help us get to the bottom of this dispute?
[00:00:33] Dr. John Meade from Phoenix Seminary joins us to shed light on this controversy by looking at early church canon lists and
[00:00:40] some little known facts about the reformers, about the Council of Trent, about
[00:00:44] Augustine and Jerome and the significance of the Septuagint, which is a collection of Greek
[00:00:50] translations of the Old Testament that many of the apostles and Jesus himself would have been familiar with.
[00:00:56] So we're gonna get to the bottom of this debate and learn a little bit more about how complex church history really is.
[00:01:08] Today on this episode, we have a guest. We have John Meade.
[00:01:13] John is a professor of Old Testament at Phoenix Seminary. He's also the co-director of the Text and Canon Institute.
[00:01:19] He's written a bunch of helpful books on
[00:01:22] the Canon, Canon Lists, History of the Canon, all that type of stuff. And so we're really glad to have you on the show.
[00:01:28] Thanks for joining us, John. Yeah, Brian. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
[00:01:32] Well, you know before that we started recording, I was just complimenting you on this nice backdrop you have of all these books and
[00:01:38] it's a great... every scholar needs to have that backdrop, right?
[00:01:42] And so I'm impressed with yours and also just grateful for the time that you're spending with us on a topic that I think is really, really
[00:01:49] interesting. And that's specifically
[00:01:51] about Old Testament Canon and even more specifically about the fact that Roman Catholic Bibles are a little heavier than Protestant Bibles
[00:02:01] because they've got seven more books and some additions to
[00:02:04] Daniel and Esther. And they have this collection that people refer to as
[00:02:11] I guess the apocryphal books or the Deutero-Canonical books or something like that.
[00:02:14] But I remember looking into the subject and it's a little perplexing. You're kind of like, why is it that
[00:02:20] Christian traditions differ on books of the Old Testament and it's a bit of a strange kind of thing to look into, but very, very interesting.
[00:02:29] And thankfully you have done a lot of great scholarly work on this topic
[00:02:33] and that's why you're here. And so I'm just curious, your own story, what got you interested in studying the Canon?
[00:02:40] Yeah. And you guys can scholarship and do that. Yeah, yeah, that's great.
[00:02:44] So my academic chops background is kind of in the area of Old Testament textual criticism.
[00:02:52] So I've always had an interest in manuscripts and
[00:02:56] differences between the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, right? So the Septuagint, right? The translation, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
[00:03:05] So very early on getting into that just kind of got my
[00:03:11] my wheels going, you know? As well as kind of like this scenario right now.
[00:03:17] When I was in seminary, I went to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
[00:03:23] They had an undergraduate college and what's fascinating is all these undergraduates had these same questions.
[00:03:30] Surprise, surprise. Like how did we get the Bible?
[00:03:34] And they kind of, I don't know how it is. They kind of came, many of them came to me and asked those questions.
[00:03:41] I think because they knew I was, you know, into the manuscripts and the languages.
[00:03:45] But to be honest with you, I had not really at that point delved into the Canon question.
[00:03:51] I had read some books, very good books
[00:03:55] that were kind of detailing the history of the Hebrew Canon.
[00:03:59] And then fast forward, I was teaching a class at Phoenix Seminary on the Canon
[00:04:05] in 2014, 2015, something like this.
[00:04:09] And I realized to like my shame, I had never looked at a real Canon list before Brian.
[00:04:18] So a Canon list for those who don't know, this would be an author or counsel's opinion
[00:04:25] on which books are divinely inspired and the books are listed.
[00:04:29] I like to talk about them as the earliest table of contents to the Bible.
[00:04:33] Okay. Because the titles of the books would just be listed out.
[00:04:37] And if you've seen, if you're reading a book, an introduction to the biblical Canon,
[00:04:43] say something by Lee McDonald, he's just a popular name in this discussion,
[00:04:50] or a book called The Canon Debate, which was published I think in 2002.
[00:04:55] Like there's an appendix at the back of the Canon Debate book that just has lists upon lists of books.
[00:05:02] And I realized though, that by reading those lists, I was not actually reading a Canon list.
[00:05:12] And this was the hard truth because what happened is I started to look up
[00:05:16] the primary sources in preparation for this class.
[00:05:20] And I realized that there was a whole lot of like
[00:05:24] text and description and discourse about the books in the list.
[00:05:28] So scholarship for almost 100 years has only been content to list, say, the books that Athanasius,
[00:05:37] the Church Father, we'll talk about him a lot here,
[00:05:40] that Athanasius believed were in the Canon.
[00:05:43] And they would just list the books that Athanasius listed, but they would omit
[00:05:46] all of the commentary that Athanasius was giving about these books. Does that make sense?
[00:05:53] And so that's what really kind of like set me off.
[00:05:59] And I realized that for whatever reason scholarship had become content
[00:06:06] with just listing the books and not actually providing the full extant text of the Canon list,
[00:06:15] you see. And so my co-author in that the Canon List book, Edmund Gallagher,
[00:06:22] he and I became fast friends. And Ed is like an off the charts kind of Canon scholar.
[00:06:29] He's brilliant, but he and I teamed up and wanted to record the original language of every
[00:06:38] one of those lists, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew in the case of the Jewish list from
[00:06:44] the Talmud, Baba Bathra. And so that's in there with English translation, right?
[00:06:50] In parallel columns so that you could see for the, how to want to say for the first time,
[00:06:55] but for the first time in a long time, you could see the full text of these sources.
[00:07:01] So that's what really got me interested in this. I was like, at first Canon List,
[00:07:05] they sound boring. It's like, again, it looks like a table of contents. And you're like,
[00:07:08] what is so important about this? But it's the way in which the list of books is framed,
[00:07:16] the way it's introduced and concluded. And sometimes commentary in the middle,
[00:07:20] that's the most interesting part, but that's the part that scholarship for almost 100 years was
[00:07:25] not reporting on if I can put it that way. You might get a little comment here or there,
[00:07:30] but no systematic treatments about this. So that's how I got into it. And once I started
[00:07:36] going down that big rabbit hole, Brian, it's hard to pull me back. So honestly,
[00:07:44] it started with students asking me questions that I had no answers for. And then I started
[00:07:49] to do my own digging. And then I realized, oh, okay, there really is some like scholarly work
[00:07:55] to do here on these Canon lists. So we don't just put the original language and the translation.
[00:08:03] Obviously, there's deep footnotes providing commentary as well on the various aspects
[00:08:08] and the lists themselves. So it was immensely helpful, that book. I mean,
[00:08:14] it really is when you can see the commentary around it, even just how some of the authors
[00:08:19] are distinguishing between books that are private books that are public books that are
[00:08:23] helpful, spurious cannot. I mean, it's the nuance is, is crazy. And but, you know,
[00:08:30] it's such a great resource because I remember being like, you know, you listen to the debates
[00:08:35] about it, you read texts and they're quoting all these things like, what is that? And you have to go
[00:08:39] like Google it and find it on some obscure website and get the PDF or something like that. And here
[00:08:44] and it's all consistent. And that was a really, really helpful resource that you put together.
[00:08:51] Well, let's talk about these Deuter O'Conanical books, these seven books. And there's an addition
[00:08:58] to there's additions to Esther, Daniel. And then there's, I guess, Baruch in addition to
[00:09:06] Jeremiah. And then you've got, you know, Tobit Judith, I might be missing you got the Maccabees
[00:09:11] first thing Maccabees, Syrac and wisdom of Solomon and Judith and Tobit and all that. So
[00:09:19] right. These books that are floating around, and how do we make sense of them? So why do you,
[00:09:28] I mean, we can go so many different angles, but how do you, how do we understand the story about
[00:09:33] how these books started to emerge and why the Protestant stream and the Catholic stream
[00:09:41] deviate on accepting his books as canonical? Yeah, these are these are big questions.
[00:09:46] But I think it's first, I think helpful to point out that these so called Deuter O'Conanical books,
[00:09:54] they, well, we'll get to this part in the story later. They're called Deuter O'Conanical
[00:09:58] way late in the story, even in the modern period. Okay. So I'll come back to that term
[00:10:06] Deuter O'Cannon here in a second. It's really helpful to point out that they are books
[00:10:13] written by Jews to start with. They're Jewish books. We tend to think of them, I think, as,
[00:10:21] because the Jews did never included them in their canon. So that's maybe step one. But Jews in the
[00:10:27] second temple period, so sometime between when the Jews came back from Babylon, came back from exile,
[00:10:35] all the way up until the destruction of the temple in 8070. Okay, these books were written.
[00:10:44] And they, I don't think they were ever really thought of as a single corpus. So some Jewish
[00:10:51] pockets would have had them. Others would not have had them or this one or that one. They don't
[00:10:57] really become a collection of books until much, much later. You see, well, we can maybe talk
[00:11:03] about that too. But they're Jewish books, many of them written in Greek primarily. So a book like
[00:11:14] Wisdom of Solomon, a book like Second Maccabees clearly composed in Greek. Okay. But now we know
[00:11:23] a book like Ben-Syra or in a Catholic Bible it's called Ecclesiasticus. This book was originally
[00:11:32] written in Hebrew. We know now. And it was later translated into Greek and that's how most of us
[00:11:37] have access to that book, okay, is through Greek and then of course it's subsequent translations.
[00:11:47] So you know the jury's still out on some of these books. First Maccabees probably was a Hebrew
[00:11:53] book but we don't know that one we don't know. We have found fragments of Tobit in Hebrew
[00:11:59] from the Dead Sea Scrolls. So the question is was Tobit originally in Hebrew or not?
[00:12:06] There's some questions about that. So to me like I want to take the beginning part of that story
[00:12:12] seriously. They're Jewish books which is what explains why later Christians will disagree over
[00:12:19] these because they were originally written by Jews. It's not like they were written by Christians
[00:12:25] then and then other Christians advocating for their canonicity. This is different than a book like
[00:12:30] The Shepherd of Hermos say for the New Testament canon which was clearly written by a Christian
[00:12:35] Hermos probably and there could have been some debates and disputes about whether that book
[00:12:42] would be canonical or not at the end but that's not the case here. These are long-standing
[00:12:50] books written by Jews. So how do we think about this? If they were written by Jews then why wouldn't
[00:12:59] we just immediately bring them into the Old Testament canon? That's the big question. Well
[00:13:04] I think an initial point is those books seemingly were never adopted into the Jewish canon,
[00:13:13] the Hebrew canon you see. So that immediately becomes a question in the early church.
[00:13:20] Should these books become part of the Christian Old Testament canon if they were never included
[00:13:27] in the Hebrew canon? This becomes known and I could talk about this one forever Brian so
[00:13:33] you're gonna have to cut me off but this becomes known as a Hebrew canon criterion.
[00:13:38] That is a standard of Christians were only going to adopt books into the Old Testament or
[00:13:47] recognize as canonical books of the Old Testament that Jews had already included in their canon.
[00:13:53] Does that make sense? Okay so Protestants fast-forwarding automatically adopt this
[00:14:01] criterion. Protestants adopt the Hebrew canon but not quite so simply but let's just say that for
[00:14:08] now they adopt the Hebrew canon and there's really good reasons for that. Let's talk about a canon
[00:14:17] list from a lesser known figure, someone named Milito of Sardis around 170. He wants to list
[00:14:28] the books of the law and the prophets because apparently he and some of his fellow bishops were
[00:14:34] puzzled by what books belong and what was there, what were the names of the books
[00:14:40] and then what was the order of the books. So it says he was in Sardis which is in
[00:14:46] modern-day Turkey and he takes a journey back east probably to the land of Israel
[00:14:51] and he wants to connect with Christian brothers there and get information like what is the list
[00:14:59] of books that we should have and what's interesting is he comes back and he reports this, this list
[00:15:05] of books and his table of contents except for Esther. Esther is omitted or at least the list
[00:15:11] lacks Esther but for the most part the list mirrors the Hebrew canon you see.
[00:15:17] It doesn't include any of the Deutero canonical books. Does that make sense?
[00:15:24] And that's our earliest evidence for canon, for the Old Testament canon, received by early
[00:15:32] Christians. Many have looked at this to say okay from the beginning early Christians adopted
[00:15:39] a Hebrew canon criterion they only received books that the Jewish canon had already received.
[00:15:47] And so yeah, that gets us kind of off and running and if you look at the lists,
[00:15:56] the canon lists in that book that we talked about, the biblical canon lists from early
[00:16:00] Christianity, 11 after Milito, 11 Greek canon lists basically fall into that pattern
[00:16:12] and they only accept books that were in the Hebrew canon. They don't include
[00:16:17] the Deutero canonical books. This was one of the more surprising things that I found in the
[00:16:22] course of this research. I thought just naively that I might find the Council of
[00:16:29] Trents, right the Roman Catholic Council of Trents list kind of in all of these other
[00:16:33] early canon lists and I was stunned to discover that very few, that no Greek lists,
[00:16:42] no early Greek lists include those books. So I think that's really kind of important
[00:16:50] to say on the front end as we're talking about the canon.
[00:16:57] So how do the Deutero canonical books so-called become included, right? I think that's maybe
[00:17:04] the big question. But do you have any follow-ups on that first part? Maybe we go back?
[00:17:08] No, I mean I think that's... So in these debates or discussions there's often
[00:17:15] there's two sort of surface level approaches I see. The one is that Martin Luther didn't
[00:17:21] like purgatory and purgatory or at least the seed that develops in the purgatory is in Second
[00:17:29] Maccabees 12 or whatever the verse is. And so Luther takes his scissors and he cuts it out
[00:17:34] and while he's at it, he just cuts out James. And he does that over and against 1500 years of
[00:17:40] unanimous consent to the acceptance of these books as canonical. And then in seminary I mean
[00:17:49] the Protestant answer was well no they were adopting the Hebrew canon. And then I think the level
[00:17:56] beneath that is the Catholic responses there was no Hebrew canon. They didn't close a Hebrew canon.
[00:18:03] In fact when they did it was in response to Christianity because everybody used
[00:18:07] the Septuagint, Jesus used the Septuagint, the Greek Translational Testament and that contained
[00:18:12] all those books and that's sort of the that's like the firing back.
[00:18:16] That's right. That's right. Okay, but we can okay I think I do think scholarship
[00:18:27] there are some outliers right it's scholarship there's never a monolithic thing going on here
[00:18:33] but a consensus is the Jewish canon is probably closed by the first century AD.
[00:18:43] Okay, now even in my own writings because I've written on the Esther there's a there's a bit
[00:18:49] of a question about Esther and not just the additions that you've referred to like just
[00:18:53] the book of Esther is was that book adopted early or recognized early on by Jews as canon.
[00:19:05] I always say this it's possible but remember there were no copies of Esther found amongst
[00:19:11] the Dead Sea Scrolls which is unusual because tons and tons of copies of books were found at
[00:19:18] amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls but so far no no biblical copy of Esther found there.
[00:19:25] And then like I said with Milito there are a few a few early Christians that don't list Esther
[00:19:32] amongst the canonical books and I think what that's doing is reflecting
[00:19:37] some early Jewish disputes about that book but that said no one is doubting that there's that
[00:19:46] there is a core more than a core canon really of the Hebrew canon by the first century AD.
[00:19:54] Okay so I think we just I think we can pretty much put to rest that the
[00:19:59] that the Jews were responding to the Christians right this kind of thing
[00:20:03] let me go back to that Hebrew canon criterion for a moment.
[00:20:07] Some have asked where does that come from I think the seed is actually in Romans 3 verse 2
[00:20:14] because Paul asks the church there in Rome what advantage is there to being a Jew right
[00:20:23] and and of course he says much in every way but the first thing he says is that the Jews possess
[00:20:29] the oracles of God. So the idea is I think if you asked if a Gentile Christian in the church at Rome
[00:20:44] had a question about what books belong to the the Old Testament or the the Hebrew scriptures
[00:20:51] right what's the collection look like I think the Jewish believer in that church would say
[00:20:56] let's go down to the synagogue and check it out you know what I mean so so in other words there's
[00:21:02] already within the middle of the first century a notion that the Jews possess these oracles they
[00:21:11] possess the scriptures and and if you want to know what they are and how many there are
[00:21:17] you go down to the synagogue and you check it out right okay so so to me that's that already
[00:21:23] signals like Christians are going to are going to follow the Jews in terms of
[00:21:31] what books are considered inspired what books are considered canon right these sorts of things
[00:21:37] also we should not leave out Josephus at this point as well so if you fast forward 60 years
[00:21:44] 50 60 years from say the time of Romans was written up to Josephus Josephus around 95 AD
[00:21:51] already tells his his debate partner apian okay he says look Jews have for for a long time only
[00:22:01] ever had 22 books and and he means 22 divinely inspired books okay and and he says every Jew
[00:22:11] knows them by their names like from a very young age you know and now that scholars have disputed
[00:22:19] you know like whether Josephus is 100 accurate you know in his statement that every Jew so in other
[00:22:25] words could we put could we put the Jew from from the Dead Sea Scrolls right from kumran on the stand
[00:22:30] and would he say yeah we only have 22 we don't know for sure I think it's pretty clear Josephus
[00:22:36] doesn't include Samaritans here Samaritans did have a different canon of course they only held
[00:22:40] to the the first five books of Moses that's pretty clear but I think Josephus is probably like
[00:22:47] you know mostly right here that that all Jews everywhere have really only had 22 books okay
[00:22:54] and if that's true then by the end of the first century the Jewish canon is already being considered
[00:23:00] closed okay and we're not going to be adding or taking away from this from this corpus okay
[00:23:08] I it's been a little while since I've read some of the the Roman Catholic apologists I don't
[00:23:17] know what Josephus is like and the testimony is is like pretty solid you see so it's hard to get around
[00:23:25] like those kinds of primary sources when you're when if you're going to try to advance a much
[00:23:31] much later date to the closing of the Hebrew canon you say I think some of it I know centers
[00:23:38] around that the the Christian church comprised largely of Jews in the beginning use the Septuagint
[00:23:48] which included okay the Deuteron canonicals which so then doesn't matter what what Josephus says
[00:23:53] because he's not a Christian okay okay then um yeah so that was gonna that's my next point I'm
[00:23:58] glad you circled back to that all right so here's a problem actually two I'm gonna I'm
[00:24:09] is a modern modern title so so Septuagint is already an abbreviation of the Latin term Septuaginta
[00:24:20] which means 70 okay so so in other words that and if you look in all of the earliest sources
[00:24:27] talking about uh Jewish Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures there are 70 translators
[00:24:35] that are only responsible for translating the Hebrew Torah into the Greek into what we call the
[00:24:42] Greek panateuch okay so the first five books of Moses um we could look at Philo Josephus uh the early
[00:24:54] descriptions of the the work of those translators uh from um the letter of Aristis which is
[00:25:03] BC okay that's quite an old old document uh and then also the the earliest Jewish
[00:25:09] commentaries on this from the Talmud all of them report those 70 translators are responsible
[00:25:18] only for the first five books of the Old Testament okay of the Hebrew Bible interesting okay yes so
[00:25:25] the in fact we can document the first time the 70 so not even the Septuagint right because the
[00:25:32] Septuagint right sounds like a a corpus of its own right like a closed corpus that maybe a committee
[00:25:40] or two were responsible for for putting together you know um but but the reality is nothing like
[00:25:47] that ever happened so so um so the uh the Septuagint is a misnomer but the first time the 70 are are
[00:25:57] described as translating the entire Old Testament is Justin Martyr when he's talking with Trifo
[00:26:05] in his dialogue in the middle of the second century AD he's the first one on record to say
[00:26:13] the entire law and by Namas by law here he extends that to the Old Testament
[00:26:20] okay um was translated by the 70 it wasn't as though Jesus and the apostles you know they go to
[00:26:26] their local synagogue and they pull out this book called right the Septuagint right and just has a
[00:26:30] whole Old Testament there correct they they certainly wouldn't have had it all between two covers
[00:26:36] right uh-uh so so at best what they're able to do is go down to a synagogue especially if you're
[00:26:44] if like Paul right Paul's maybe a better example here if he's in the in the diaspora right he's
[00:26:48] outside of Israel um outside of Jerusalem he he visits the local synagogue of Corinth
[00:26:54] and he basically says hey you know guys I need to uh I need to access your your manuscript of
[00:26:59] Isaiah because they probably don't have a bunch of them right just maybe it's only one or two
[00:27:03] copies uh and it would be in Greek and so part of the question is even um was it was it the original
[00:27:11] Septuagint or the original Old Greek translation that that the church or that the synagogue in
[00:27:18] Corinth was using maybe not maybe it already had already gone through some later revision
[00:27:25] and this sort of thing because we do know that now about the Septuagint the wording itself
[00:27:31] was revised through time okay and there are definitely some places in Paul's quotations
[00:27:39] of some books where his quotations do not reflect the oldest Greek translation that we can reconstruct
[00:27:46] his his um his text reflects we now know a later revision of that older text do you follow
[00:27:55] so uh to use an analogy like if you're a kjv onlyist like you're kind of upset about this
[00:28:03] because you never you never use the revisions right you always go back to that original
[00:28:07] English translation from you know from the 1611 you know and uh yeah but but Paul's actually
[00:28:14] quite happy to use the revised standard version so to speak okay so um so anyhow that so so
[00:28:22] the Septuagint is the biggest misnomer here and it's not and it's and it applies to the text issue
[00:28:28] but it also applies to the canon issue Brian there's actually no here's my my big point here
[00:28:33] there's no such thing as the Septuagint canon no such thing no such thing canon is a separate thing
[00:28:43] Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible is another thing okay um the only instances we have
[00:28:53] of um of those Greek translations put together in one cover come from the fourth and fifth centuries
[00:29:00] ad okay uh in codex sinaticus codex Vaticanus and then in the fifth century codex Alexandrinus
[00:29:08] they're the only three manuscripts that we have that put all those Greek translations together
[00:29:14] which means ultimately they are later christian creations so that's my first point there's no
[00:29:21] such thing as the Septuagint canon there's no i'm convinced if you asked uh peter john james
[00:29:31] paul jesus himself whether we should consult the translation of the 70 they would say sure
[00:29:41] which of the five books genesis through deuteronomy should we look at do you see what i mean they would
[00:29:48] never in the first century ever think to look at say the greek translation or the septuagint
[00:29:55] translation of isaia it would never cross their minds to do but do they quote from the septuagint
[00:30:02] with regard so so so what i'm gonna say is they quote from a greek translation sometimes yes
[00:30:10] but that's a complicated issue because not all the new testament authors quote from just the
[00:30:15] greek translation the oldest greek translation of the old testament or the the Hebrew Bible
[00:30:21] they don't do it uh for example just this just muddies the waters but i think we have to muddy
[00:30:26] the waters on this issue especially if there's an apologist who's kind of coming at this thinking
[00:30:31] oh yeah this is just a clear pure kind of easy story to tell no no no no no no so matthew 215
[00:30:42] when matthew quotes hosea 11 one out of egypt i called my son he is not quoting the oldest
[00:30:49] greek translation of hosea there no way um because that has something like um like he summoned my
[00:31:00] children it's a plural which of course is not what matthew's argument rests on here right the um
[00:31:08] the argument here has to be that mathew i shouldn't say has to be there's two possibilities
[00:31:15] matthew could make his own greek translation from the Hebrew uh saint Jerome Jerome actually
[00:31:22] makes that argument Jerome believed matthew made his own greek translation from the
[00:31:28] Hebrew of hosea 11 verse 1 so that's very possible the the second option is remember
[00:31:34] i was telling you talking about these revisions these jewish greek revisions that were kind
[00:31:38] of circulating already by the time the gospel writers sat down to write it's very possible
[00:31:44] that matthew already had a greek copy of hosea 11 verse 1 that differed from the oldest translation
[00:31:51] right but it had already been revised according to the Hebrew and so he winds up with out of egypt
[00:31:57] i called my son so do you see what i'm saying so there's there's sort of two possibilities but
[00:32:02] both of them come back to uh the oldest septuagint greek translation being revised
[00:32:09] according to the Hebrew okay so so sometimes the new testament authors do make use of
[00:32:19] the oldest greek translations they don't oftentimes disagree with the Hebrew
[00:32:24] so there's not really there's not really a point of contention there i could maybe think of one
[00:32:31] place where i think the meaning changes but but not so drastically the um you're probably aware of amos
[00:32:38] nine being quoted in ax 15 right at the jr. council yeah um but even here you would never
[00:32:46] spot it if you were just uh comparing english translations but even here luke's copy of
[00:32:54] of uh of amos already reflects slight later revision of the original of amos so i can't even say
[00:33:04] that luke is quoting the oldest greek translation he's actually quoting a revised version of it but
[00:33:13] the revision still contains the big difference right whether it's the remnant of edam or the
[00:33:19] remnant of humanity right so those are those are the two differences for those who don't know Hebrew
[00:33:26] right edam uh our our english word edam comes right from the Hebrew edom okay so this is
[00:33:34] these are the descendants of esau yes uh but the Hebrew word for humanity is adham
[00:33:43] um adham right uh which means humanity and the consonants olive dollyth maim and edam
[00:33:50] are exactly the same as the consonants for adham olive dollyth maim you see right so it's not a
[00:33:58] consonental issue it's a vocalization issue there that's the biggest change the verb is a
[00:34:04] little bit different whether they're seeking or whether they're being um dispossessed that's
[00:34:10] the other kind of big issue there that that's a little bit more complicated but i'm happy to
[00:34:14] talk about that that's a textual issue though has zero to do with the canon okay or anything like that
[00:34:21] so so there are times where new testament authors do make use of a greek translation
[00:34:28] that it doesn't easily square with the Hebrew okay but it's not as foreign as it maybe
[00:34:33] seems once you delve into how textual variants occur in manuscripts and then how a textual variant
[00:34:42] could be translated into greek that way okay this is not i don't want to this is not earth
[00:34:49] shatter it's certainly not faith shattering okay i want to put it that way so okay no septuagint
[00:34:56] canon the first people to put the old testament in and new testament as well but the old testament in
[00:35:06] in in between two covers with some of these jewish apocrypha or deuterocanonical books
[00:35:12] happened in the fourth fifth century right in those three manuscripts that i mentioned but let me
[00:35:18] be clear about this even in these three manuscripts these books these deuterocanonical books
[00:35:25] are not treated as a singular corpus in fact across the three manuscripts only four of the books are
[00:35:34] are contained like across all three that are consistent across all three yeah yeah sorry i mean
[00:35:39] consistent yeah and it's it's tobit judith wisdom of solemn and that book ben sira or ecclesiasticus
[00:35:46] okay so so only those four books can be found in all three of those codices
[00:35:53] the maccabees are scattered i i'm trying to remember i don't even first and second maccabees
[00:35:59] aren't even in codex vaticanus they're not even in there okay and that's an important that's a
[00:36:05] really really important minus here right but they're not even in there if i'm this is off
[00:36:09] the top of my head sinaticus has first maccabees and four maccabees i believe it is it does
[00:36:15] not have second or third maccabees okay um so anyone who says that the contents in that manuscript
[00:36:28] equal a canon are wrong because the canon lists and the contents there
[00:36:39] and and right and an author's telling us right this is the canon yeah
[00:36:42] yeah never align fully with the contents of a manuscript okay this is where i filed those think
[00:36:51] that that was the canon even though they disagreed do they think that oh tobit they're canonical
[00:36:57] no that's what i'm saying i don't think they did okay i i think i think
[00:37:04] um manuscripts were very costly to make right just the sheer raw skins it took right for the
[00:37:12] writing surface alone uh super costly the um so so i think what's going on and this might get us to
[00:37:20] the next topic here is in a in a book in a in a codex like vaticanus where four of those
[00:37:27] deuterocanonical books are included the the compiler and the user of that codex
[00:37:34] are already thinking in terms of okay we've got our canonical books
[00:37:38] and we also have our devotional edificatory books okay because the reason i say this is because
[00:37:47] um if you're gonna if you're gonna do all this like one time or two times let's just get it done
[00:37:54] let's just we're gonna put it all together in one uh volume but the canon list is the interpretive
[00:38:03] key to the contents in that volume um our readers should know this because the roman catholic
[00:38:09] apologist doesn't make this very clear they just say see tobits in the manuscript therefore
[00:38:16] tobit is in the canon right well no yes tobit is in the manuscript but the scribe does not say
[00:38:28] by the way tobit is in the canon um the scribe also doesn't say by the way tobits not in the
[00:38:35] canon the point is the scribe doesn't give you any commentary on tobits status in this manuscript
[00:38:42] it's just there but all of the canon lists in greek never include tobit in the canon
[00:38:51] and those other lists that like athenaecias that go further they talk about how
[00:38:55] tobit is not canonized but tobit is able to be read right so so in other words there's a there's
[00:39:04] a tear there right there's a distinction okay so so the manuscript is uh i think we have we scholars
[00:39:12] have applied sloppy interpretations of contents of manuscripts over the years and that's kind of
[00:39:20] fueled some of these roman catholic arguments about the early adoption of the septuagint canon
[00:39:27] which included these you know deuteronomical books but if i if i don't grant the these apologists
[00:39:34] a septuagint canon at the beginning which i don't there's no evidence that the jews even
[00:39:40] collected all of these books do you see into one place the only place that you've got
[00:39:46] collections of these translations are the fourth fifth century
[00:39:51] christian manuscripts there are i should i should back up though there are earlier papyri manuscripts
[00:39:59] say third century maybe second or late second third century there is like a a grouping say of
[00:40:08] ester daniel and azekiel in a manuscript okay so there are some manuscripts that show connections
[00:40:15] between books but but by and large the manuscripts contained one book and one only okay so i look at
[00:40:25] that and go no one was really thinking in terms of like showing groupings or something like this
[00:40:32] early on later on that happens but but early on that was not happening and all of our evidence
[00:40:38] i should be careful here i think most all of our evidence is christian not jewish okay
[00:40:46] so anyways that that's um that's what i want to say about there being no septuagint canon
[00:40:53] and then i can't look at an ancient codex and say here's a canon that doesn't work either
[00:41:00] this is so simple it pains me to say it every time in these sorts of venues
[00:41:04] if you want to know what an early christian thought was in the canon you go to the canon list
[00:41:14] right like simple like you want to know what the canon is go to the canon list don't try to
[00:41:22] track down all of their citations of different books where they call you know a certain citation
[00:41:28] like scripture or something like that i mean you can do that and that's occupied scholars for decades
[00:41:35] here you know um you can do that but you wind up with really weird synthesis like well athanasius
[00:41:44] seems to refer to ben sira as scripture in a place or two but again when when athanasius of
[00:41:51] alexandria comes around and lists all of the canonical books ben sira is not among the
[00:41:56] canonical books so i trust what he says in his canon list and i just say that he he could also
[00:42:02] refer to other books outside of the canon even right as scripture we tend to equate canon and
[00:42:08] scripture the the ancients had a narrow corpus of canonical books and and they could have sort of
[00:42:17] wider a wider circle of of scriptural books does that make sense they mean by scriptural
[00:42:26] inspired or do they mean okay no no he i uh no athanasius never calls um ben sira um
[00:42:35] inspired uh he he refers to it as scripture once or twice um but there were debates about that
[00:42:44] um there there were debates about some books as to whether we should as to whether um their inspiration
[00:42:52] would would lend them towards that universal recognition right that canonical status
[00:42:59] to use a new testament example uh origin of alexandria right roughly 185 to 255 right is
[00:43:07] when he lives uh origin i think it's pretty clear he held a private opinion on a book called the shepherd
[00:43:14] of hermos he actually thought the book was divinely inspired but what's interesting is that
[00:43:20] he basically says um he basically says it is my opinion and sometimes he'll use the shepherd of
[00:43:28] hermos in um uh theological arguments you know and he'll he'll have to be very careful when
[00:43:35] he cites the shepherd he'll say well if one accepts it you see i mean in other words if one
[00:43:42] accepts it as an authoritative source for for this point you see and it's pretty clear origin
[00:43:50] realized that he was in the minority and i know this because in his sermon on joshua 7.1
[00:44:01] origin goes on to list the 27 books of the new testament
[00:44:06] and the canonical books and the shepherd of hermos is not included so he holds a private opinion
[00:44:13] on something like the the inspired nature of the shepherd but when it comes time to like okay
[00:44:20] what do the churches truly recognize as canon the shepherd is not amongst those books so
[00:44:28] so the question is like with a book like back to our doodoro canon right like tobit
[00:44:33] i think there were a lot of private opinions but i think it got more traction than that though
[00:44:39] and then we'll talk about that in a second but go ahead well so it seems like the first
[00:44:43] couple centuries you always eastern lists and they don't accept the doodoro canonical books
[00:44:48] nope and then you get to the fourth century and you have the big showdown that's it you got
[00:44:54] Jerome you got Augustine and that seems like it changes everything yeah what was that can you
[00:45:01] sketch out what that debate was about and how it affected yeah for sure okay yeah so we come to
[00:45:06] it now right like this is the i think this is the um the main event the main event yeah no doubt
[00:45:13] so um so i want to back uh so we talked about the hebrou canon criterion right okay
[00:45:22] eventually there was another criterion that that we we call the the ecclesiastical or the church
[00:45:29] acceptance criterion okay so so so in other words uh there were some people some some
[00:45:36] early Christians who said well i just looked at the jewish synagogue and whatever books they have
[00:45:40] though those are my books okay simple done the the church acceptance criterion is different
[00:45:47] what they do is they look at like okay are the what are the vast majority of churches accepting
[00:45:54] as canon um or or Augustine even breaks this down further like one of the most authoritative
[00:46:01] churches accepting as canon right like he has this whole elaborate uh description of how the
[00:46:07] church decides its own books okay how did we get there um there are some there are
[00:46:16] there are some early early soundings of this and you can read about this in the scribes and
[00:46:20] scripture chapter on on this um but the earliest soundings are probably from a guy like tertullian
[00:46:26] in north africa he he does seem to argue that well whatever books are edificatory for the church
[00:46:34] those are the ones she accepts and and tertullian uh explicitly denies the hebrou canon criterion
[00:46:41] okay so tertullian is one of those guys who just doesn't doesn't look at the matter that way
[00:46:48] origin is very debated very debated but at the end of the day i think the evidence
[00:46:55] slightly favors the view that origin also had a church acceptance criterion driving his canonical
[00:47:03] views okay i don't want to say much more than that here because it really is
[00:47:09] elaborate and it's contested yeah so i'm just i'm just gonna put it that way and kind of leave it there
[00:47:14] okay but all that to say augustin isn't um he's not inventing the church criterion
[00:47:24] or the church acceptance criterion of books that's why i mentioned those other two and
[00:47:28] somewhat because augustin makes it very plain we don't look to the synagogue we look to see
[00:47:34] what we're what what god has given the churches in terms of books and when he goes on to list all
[00:47:40] the canonical books in 397 ad he lists what what we would call our our 39 books of the old testament
[00:47:49] with six others okay and those six others are not sort of tacked on at the end those
[00:47:55] six other books are integrated within all the others and he seems pretty clear that these
[00:48:03] are canonical this list that augustin drafts was also the one that the the synod of hippo a few years
[00:48:14] earlier had adopted and which the council of carthage would go on to adopt uh in the early part of the
[00:48:24] fifth cent 399 maybe is it 399 but 419 i think is when carthage finally kind of finishes up
[00:48:31] and uh and then that's the list this is the history here this is what they're going to point out
[00:48:36] that's the list that winds up in the council of florants in the 15th century and then ultimately
[00:48:45] with a change it's it's not trends list exactly trend lists baruch
[00:48:52] augustin doesn't actually list baruch okay so there are there are some differences but
[00:48:58] in essence trends list could be traced back to augustin and that council or synod of hippo
[00:49:11] so augustin adopted a church acceptance criterion and then that became kind of the the line in the
[00:49:18] western church but the western church is spicier than this as you because you've already mentioned
[00:49:23] gerome and and as it turns out not just gerome there are earlier latin fathers like hillary of
[00:49:31] quattier out in in modern modern day france but ancient gall okay who drafted a canon list of
[00:49:38] old testament books around 360 ad so much earlier than those two other guys and when he let when
[00:49:44] he lists the old testament books it mirrors the hebrew canon you see gerome has three separate
[00:49:52] canon lists each one of them adhering to the hebrew canon including no deutero canonical books
[00:50:01] i'm going to come back to what he does with those in a second and then rufinas lists
[00:50:08] the canonical books of the hebrew canon uh he lists the other books in a middle category called
[00:50:14] ecclesiastical books books that can be read in church but not books that we would establish
[00:50:20] points of doctrine upon okay he's pretty rufinas even is pretty clear about this um but anyhow
[00:50:28] that that debate that showdown between augustin and gerome basically played itself all the way out
[00:50:37] through the middle ages and uh and was not even decided until uh what 15
[00:50:45] 15 man i usually have these dates what is it 1544 i think it is is the council of trend or 1546 maybe
[00:50:53] 1546 that's that's when they seem to i say seem because i'll come back to that in a second too
[00:50:59] trend seems to decide augustin in favor of augustin um so open to that point there were
[00:51:06] two streams two major streams that's right they were your followers of augustin okay and your
[00:51:11] followers of gerome that's right and it's pretty clear like like in the middle ages like uh
[00:51:17] bead right the the what seventh sixth sixth seventh century scholar bead he follows gerome
[00:51:23] um i think the victor reens hue of st victor they seem to follow gerome
[00:51:31] uh i'm trying to remember who who who have note actually follows augustin
[00:51:39] in the middle ages i saw in the someone sent me this excerpt from the catholic encyclopedia where
[00:51:48] he had a passing mention that aquinas even he might was was you know back and forth on some of the
[00:51:55] deuter canonical but that's always i mean you're mentioning carthage and then you go to florida
[00:52:01] and there's all these right time between those but i mean if they decided it i mean there's
[00:52:06] there's also the council of roam that i hear that a lot oh we can talk about that but that
[00:52:11] that's another debated piece as to whether whether there's a canon list even that came out
[00:52:15] of the council of roman 382 okay um we have something called the galasian decree but it's
[00:52:22] but it's pretty clear that there's some fabrications within our text of the galasian decree and so
[00:52:28] there's a little bit of a debate as to whether the list is authentic to the roman council or a later
[00:52:36] a later appendix so so that's a tricky you'll see that's why that that one's not in our canon
[00:52:42] list book right uh so so yeah well ed and i do plan to revise that book uh in due time
[00:52:50] and so there there we'll have to deal with galasius a bit later but the reason we didn't include it
[00:52:55] is because it's so it's still a very disputed point as to whether that canon list belonged to
[00:53:00] the council or as much later so but even if i guess you granted that or you have all these
[00:53:05] councils why are people still disagreeing in the middle ages exactly and not just the
[00:53:09] middle ages here's what i'm am more certain about when you get right up to the doorstep of the
[00:53:14] reformation you have roman catholic scholar irasmus still adhering to the gerome view of the canon
[00:53:25] because that's i asked that same question i said but irasmus is a roman catholic scholar
[00:53:32] and he is not interested in deviating from the church on on these big questions that is not his
[00:53:39] that is not what he wants but he's still free to point out that there are differences like the church
[00:53:46] waits the books of the penitouk and the gospels heavier than tobit and judith for example like
[00:53:54] he basically puts the matter that way cardinal kajetan the the the cardinal responsible
[00:54:02] for reviewing martin luther's doctrine uh at the deities of augsburg in 1518
[00:54:09] kajetan explicitly lays out the the the church's uh adherence to the hebrou canon
[00:54:18] um and relegating those other books to it's a he calls it a canon but but what he means by that
[00:54:25] is a um is a um a rule uh for for books dealing with like practice and manners
[00:54:37] not doc like he separates them from the doctrinal question which gerome did too
[00:54:41] so that's i i guess that's my point irasmus and gerome sorry irasmus and kajetan are just
[00:54:50] parroting gerome yeah so that's that's the gerome tradition coming coming very strongly through
[00:54:57] cardinal hymenes from spain who who was you know the grand inquisitor once upon a time
[00:55:04] i i like to say there's no one really more catholic than cardinal hymenes yeah you gotta be
[00:55:09] pretty catholic to do that pretty much but when it comes time to commenting on the canon
[00:55:14] he he waxes gerome he waxes eloquently on gerome and that's that's his view so and that's in 1517
[00:55:22] with hymenes so so in 30 years when trend meets the grand inquisitors canonical view will already
[00:55:32] be deemed anathema it'll be it'll be deemed accursed right that's how trend if you don't
[00:55:39] adhere to this list and the book forms within this list let that person be anathema right so
[00:55:46] so we're talking about like a like a 30 year period here where the grand inquisitor is now all of a
[00:55:50] sudden out right because he doesn't hold uh to the right canon okay so so um
[00:55:58] so i agree with i i love the way you put that earlier if it had already been super settled in
[00:56:02] middle ages how is it that these catholics cardinals in the church are are not on board
[00:56:10] with augustin's view did they die before trend yeah they were yes yeah yeah uh kajitans views
[00:56:19] in my reading on trend kajitans views of the canon were reviewed and rejected by the council
[00:56:26] of trend yeah they did not they did not agree with the way he was uh synthesizing things so
[00:56:34] um so that did happen um yeah so gerome it all starts with gerome though and he's
[00:56:43] you know he's debating with i don't know if he's directly debating with with augustin but at
[00:56:48] least they're the the center of this controversy yeah why did they why did they disagree i mean
[00:56:54] it's it's funny like augustin like i feel like as a Protestant and i'm in reform circles everyone's
[00:56:59] like augustin yeah and then i'm like he's our theological homeboy yeah yeah and then i'm like
[00:57:03] well yeah he does think that baptism saves you and he does think that uh and then i see his canon
[00:57:09] list and i'm like oh what's going on with what's going on with her boy over here i i think some
[00:57:14] of it has to do with gerome spent a lot of time in betel hem he was in the land right i i i
[00:57:22] don't think augustin ever traveled to israel so i i think there's uh there's differences there
[00:57:29] in terms of their their their background their educations um i mentioned tertullian earlier from
[00:57:36] north africa and of course that's where augustin is from so i i do sense that there's a north
[00:57:44] african tradition on the canon that was adopting more books than the rest of the church you see
[00:57:52] elsewhere um and so augustin's uh like north african views i think also have to come into play on this
[00:58:03] because it's hard to it's hard for me to show you that church acceptance criterion outside
[00:58:09] of north africa that's why origin is kind of significant because origin right is from egypt
[00:58:16] um and he holds may hold the same or a very very similar view uh though debated but so in
[00:58:23] other words geography wouldn't account for all of that but but i do think tertullian augustin
[00:58:28] that is a clear connection um to to the to to the wider canon uh coming coming out as soon
[00:58:38] as augustin and the synod of hippo i should add this the synod of hippo um kind of a rule i guess on
[00:58:46] on the canon pope innocent the first picks up that same list and includes it in one of his letters
[00:58:54] okay which becomes um oh my terminology is failing me but that those letters of course are are
[00:59:04] adopted into the church's canon law you know okay um they're not as high up or yeah it's something
[00:59:11] like that but i think that's more of the the eastern side but the but these these decretals
[00:59:16] decretals the popes decretals they started off as these letters but then they be they take on a
[00:59:22] decretal status in uh the canon law of the church it's not they're not viewed right as uh as as
[00:59:31] authoritative as a conciliar decision but they're still weighted okay so and that's that's around 400
[00:59:40] ad okay so so so that i think creates a momentum for that side of the western church's canonical views
[00:59:50] okay but it's still fascinating that not that that it was still not strong enough to stamp out
[00:59:57] the Jerome view those were allowed to exist side by side now it's interesting about Trent last thing
[01:00:04] about this yeah Trent we now know because the the the notebooks the journals the minutes have all been
[01:00:15] opened up the Vatican has allowed researchers to to finally look at those within the last um
[01:00:21] maybe 70 years 80 years so this is kind of recent oh really i didn't know yeah yeah it's a recent thing
[01:00:29] and we're learning that um that certain prelates at the council of Trent stood up
[01:00:37] and said hey we're not here to decide between um between what reputable theologians have said
[01:00:46] on this question right like Augustine and Jerome like who who do we think we are that we're going to
[01:00:53] decide who was right on this yeah so it's interesting as we now know the the Italian name uh the
[01:01:01] the the prelates name is banuchio so he he stood up and actually made this statement and apparently
[01:01:07] everyone in the room agreed yeah you're right we're who are we we're not gonna we're not gonna
[01:01:11] decide between Augustine and Jerome here and what's fascinating is when when Trent publishes their
[01:01:19] decree on the canon there's no hint of that qualification it's just it's totally left out
[01:01:29] but we can but we can go back and read that they had accepted this qualification in other
[01:01:34] words i don't think they wanted a particular view of the canon to become a as a like an
[01:01:40] entrenched part of their DNA i think according to to some some of these Jesuit historians that
[01:01:48] i'm reading on Trent i think they actually wanted to keep the healthy debate going i don't think
[01:01:53] they wanted to like decide it once and for all but no matter what though the the decree looked
[01:02:01] more like Augustine and a year later john calvin and his antidotes to Trent he actually comments
[01:02:08] on what Trent has done like he just read the decree and he said well they've obviously decided
[01:02:14] they've changed the chalk lines is what he says they they've redrafted what the canon of scripture is
[01:02:20] so it's it seems like the early church adopted that Hebrew criterion
[01:02:25] yeah and so early the earliest the earliest evidence and so if you're looking at if you're
[01:02:30] talking to them talking to the early church guys they're just like and i think also what's
[01:02:36] helpful is and i think you mentioned this in your book if you have the category of helpful but not
[01:02:40] canonical right or a broader sense of people use can in different ways then for example unlike
[01:02:46] first climate quotes judith you're like oh this is but it's an edification it's like she's an example
[01:02:52] exactly right which is exactly what the second tier of you would expect absolutely and if you look at
[01:02:58] for that passage in first climate what is it 54 and 55 if you read those uh esters included as well
[01:03:04] there's ester and judith together but but but clements point there is not to talk about them as
[01:03:09] scripture at all right he's just he's just he's just talking about them as examples of piety
[01:03:14] right in the way that they so so uh yeah i've looked at that passage pretty closely on a number of
[01:03:20] occasions and i i'm convinced clements not making any statements about canon or scripture even
[01:03:26] there he just we have these we have these women that we can look to as right as great examples
[01:03:32] of godliness so um so yeah i i just explained the clement thing a little bit differently um he
[01:03:39] clement is not uh pretending to give us any kind of statement on scripture or canon all that vocabulary
[01:03:47] is is is not included there i'm trying to figure how to ask this with like so so jerome
[01:03:53] as his famous preface i think the samuels and in samuel and kings and yep that's right
[01:03:58] the homely tit prologue right and he's basically saying like look you know i'm supposed to translate
[01:04:02] this um just so you know the hebrus don't accept you know the dudur kanadu books
[01:04:09] i don't but uh you know translate it you know and and so but what that means is that there was
[01:04:16] an expectation it seems like at his time there was there was a debate and seems like agustin
[01:04:20] affirms that because he's saying some aren't accepted by all churches da da da da
[01:04:24] so prior to that there's debate over the canon it seems like the hebrou criteria would have solved
[01:04:30] that if they just they're all like look as what the jews have that's what we'll take how it seems
[01:04:36] like either the hebrou canon wasn't that's universally accepted or it dissolved over time very quickly
[01:04:42] so well i guess that's what i mean let yes let's back up a couple steps here yeah i can show you
[01:04:47] to tolley in around 200 ad that's early yeah rejecting the hebrou canon criterion okay so that's
[01:04:55] i see yeah it's not universally accepted but though of those who reject the hebrou canon criterion
[01:05:02] they are located mainly to north africa i see yes i just want to be yeah clear about the
[01:05:08] and the guys closest to people to the jews who would know are more hebrou canon including yeah
[01:05:14] but but hillary though hillary apatiae is in france
[01:05:19] yeah hearing prior adhering primarily to the hebrou canon criterion right so i i would say that in
[01:05:25] terms of geographical distribution that's the i think that's the default it's not the it's not
[01:05:30] the universal but it is the default setting when it comes to what canon the christians should
[01:05:37] receive do you think agustin knew that the hebrou canon didn't have those books like did he
[01:05:42] just read gerome stuff and go like oh okay and just but i don't care or like how did he interact with
[01:05:49] with gerome yeah i know he knew that he knew that yeah they they interacted mainly on the translation
[01:05:58] issue okay so to complicate things a little bit agustin agustin accessed the bible
[01:06:07] from through a latin translation of that greek translation of the hebrou so something called
[01:06:15] the vedis latina or the old latin is the way agustin read the bible i mean it's like a
[01:06:22] translation of a translation you see gerome knew that and so gerome of course his his project
[01:06:31] in the what we call the latin vulgate is is to go directly back to the hebrou source what he called
[01:06:36] the hebrou truth okay and he said the hebrea keveritas he said i'm going to translate into latin
[01:06:44] directly from the hebrou you see and i'm going to remove all of the middle steps so that as you
[01:06:51] imagine that that revealed a lot of differences between the hebrou and that greek translation
[01:07:01] of the septuagen okay so that that's uh that's where agustin and gerome mainly battled was on that
[01:07:07] okay and then the canons like a subset of that yeah because agustin yes exactly and and again
[01:07:13] gerome because he had an intermediate view of those books they were neither canon nor were
[01:07:18] apocrypha they weren't dangerous or heretical writings um though he does call them apocrypha right
[01:07:25] one time okay calls those six books apocrypha but later on he does come back and say no no
[01:07:32] no they're they're good for edification so he i think he knew what he was doing when he
[01:07:38] used that word apocrypha because it's really pejorative it's like it's like the label you
[01:07:43] give to something that you just want to not mess with right or deal with you just call it
[01:07:47] apocrypha but he comes back and he has a more sober view of them later they're they're an
[01:07:50] intermediate right the 60 to the economic books they're edificatory they're not for
[01:07:55] the establishing of doctrine that's what the canan canon books do and they're not heretical
[01:07:59] or apocryphal okay they're in the middle uh gerome um still translates those middle tier books
[01:08:10] he translates tobe in judith uh and he has a preface for them as well and he tells us um
[01:08:17] he does so because judith is a great example of um a virtue sure and uh and and we can read this book
[01:08:27] that way but he's super clear we would not go to these books for for doctrine
[01:08:34] so augustin uh he had a dog in the fight because his translation is based off of
[01:08:40] a greek translation that he wants to defend and and tied to that is what i guess he assumed
[01:08:47] that greek translation also included these other books yeah i think so but that okay but
[01:08:53] interestingly though he knows uh he says this in the city of god he knows that the 70 translators
[01:09:01] worked during the time of king patolamy the second in egypt and he has the right dates for
[01:09:09] patolamy it's like the the early part of the third century bc okay and in the in when he's talking
[01:09:16] about the books of macabees he knows that first and second macabees are like late late second
[01:09:26] first century bc so how did the 70 translators translate first and second macabees
[01:09:34] ah so he doesn't actually tie a real he does not make a tight connection either between the 70
[01:09:41] and the canon he knows chronologically that doesn't work so so and and that's i think the
[01:09:48] important thing right again there is no such thing as a septuagint canon right and i think the
[01:09:53] ancients also knew that modern septuagint scholars are the ones guilty of promoting
[01:10:01] the septuagint as a corpus of books and i think that's uh that's a problem let me show you something
[01:10:14] here's a here's a modern edition of septuaginta notice he's got it spelled right with the latin
[01:10:22] but um i don't know if you ever look through this brian there's some books in here it's interesting
[01:10:27] there uh there are your kind of classical um books but then books like third macabees fourth macabees
[01:10:42] um four macabees i don't think there's a branch of the christian tradition that holds four macabees
[01:10:48] as canonical not a single one okay um more interestingly when we get to the book of psalms
[01:10:58] in here in this thing called the septuagint here we are let's see yes as a part of the
[01:11:17] Greek version of the psalms much much later there were some oads or hymns that were added to the end
[01:11:26] do you know that let's see here one of them yes one of them is entitled
[01:11:39] prosuke marias taste the aute aute coup the prayer of Mary the god-bearer
[01:11:49] and it's her magnificat from luke chapter two
[01:11:54] in the septuagint right so modern septuagint scholars have seen this corpus
[01:12:08] grow you see because you're not translated that yeah of course not no this is the this is the
[01:12:17] widest possible line you could draw okay on what is included in the septuagint but they're using
[01:12:27] but to to to roe alfred ralf's credit they're using ancient christian manuscripts as they compile this
[01:12:34] and somewhere along the way ancient christian scribes thought it'd be really cool
[01:12:37] to add a lengthy appendix of oads or hymns to israel's collection of hymns and psalms do you see that
[01:12:47] yeah but but there's no way that comes from a jewish tradition that's a much much later christian
[01:12:54] development so you would never call that as a result of the 70 right so
[01:13:03] if you're going to define the set the septuagint corpus in its widest possible parameters you
[01:13:08] would look to something like this if you're going to actually follow the earliest historical sources
[01:13:13] the word the word 70 is attached only to genesis to deuteronomy by the letter of heiress deus
[01:13:23] philo of alexandria jocephus and even the earliest jewish rabbis okay so
[01:13:32] I anyone who wants to argue just simply well the septuagint had these books i would say ah yes
[01:13:40] but it also had a lot of other books that no one's ever thought was canon right yeah this is a
[01:13:47] fascinating deep dive thank you so much maybe uh maybe in conclusion just just thinking about
[01:13:53] these books i mean i've been working my way reading through them yes a lot of them are edifying
[01:13:58] you know and and even protestant bibles around the time of reformation had still had them they just
[01:14:05] had them yes you know sectioned off um and i even think some lutheran and anglican tradition
[01:14:11] still will have them as supplementary readings so yeah we can still have them as um as part
[01:14:17] of their electionary okay yeah so maybe if we if we pull it if we pull back from the sort of
[01:14:23] catholic debates about it you know yep and we just look at this section of books
[01:14:28] how should we view them today yeah yeah i i so so i read them more carefully when it comes to doctrine
[01:14:35] right right but but i still think uh these books just like jerome said they can be read for
[01:14:44] edification just a quick example uh in second maccabees chapter seven
[01:14:51] there's a mother and her six sons who are um who are being tortured tortured by
[01:15:00] king uh antiochus epiphanies the fourth okay it's pretty brutal too it's oh it's super brutal yeah
[01:15:06] they're like getting close and close to this like frying pan kind of thing like it's it's
[01:15:12] yeah it's it's it's atrocious right um but when i read that chapter right because they're
[01:15:19] they're basically the king gives them a simple test are you going to obey me and eat pigs flesh
[01:15:27] or you're gonna face torture unto death right that's the that's the and the whole chapter unfolds
[01:15:33] with the mother just encouraging the sons look you'll die yes but if you die faithful to God
[01:15:41] and in in fear of God you will be raised again like there's a strong chapter on the resurrection
[01:15:47] of the body actually it's a fascinating chapter for lots of reasons but i read that uh not about its
[01:15:56] resurrection piece though historically that's interesting i read that though and i go wow if
[01:16:01] if these jewish martyrs will die for the law when put to the test will i die for christ
[01:16:13] when i'm put to the test do you see what i mean like if i substitute christ for the law here
[01:16:20] um i actually i can actually benefit from their examples of piety here and uh i would never
[01:16:30] ever build a doctrine of martyrdom based on this text that's not what i'm that's not what i'm
[01:16:35] suggesting but i just read it and i go man this is virtue this is true fear of god here
[01:16:43] okay and not the fear of man and these these guys are willing to die for the law
[01:16:52] and i kind of as a christian i smile at that um but then i have to quickly ask myself but would
[01:16:59] i be willing to die for christ in this kind of temptation or or trial does that make sense so
[01:17:08] yeah so to yeah so so that's a way in which i've come to read these books as edificatory right as
[01:17:14] building up right my my faith um but i will not base my faith or a point of the faith
[01:17:24] upon these books i won't do it because only a select few christians have ever done that you see and that's
[01:17:35] well i'm yeah i mean it makes me think too like you could do worse on supplemental literature
[01:17:43] i mean i'm like sure actually you know what read read whismasulliman over whatever
[01:17:47] evangelical bestseller right now i mean yeah that's correct this would be more edifying
[01:17:51] that's correct yeah i'm with you um and even on the ancient palette right that we're not talking
[01:17:57] about something like the gospel of thomas here sure that's i mean that were which clearly had
[01:18:02] some sort of gnostic kind of you know overtones um we're talking about books that i think for
[01:18:10] the most part would be consistent with jewish theology okay um it clearly amplifies things we
[01:18:20] can find the resurrection in the hebra bible can't we right it's it's grounded in these verses right
[01:18:27] where right yahweh is the one who kills and makes alive right so so we know that the resurrection
[01:18:36] is is in text of the old testament but when i come to something like second maccabees seven i
[01:18:43] i do see an amplification right of something that's already there okay but in second maccabees 12
[01:18:51] 43 to 46 this is where judas maccabee wants to uh offer prayers for the for the dead jewish
[01:18:58] soldiers this is where the purgatory doctrine eventually comes from what's interesting is
[01:19:03] that in second maccabees 12 his practice of praying for the dead i find that nowhere else brian
[01:19:11] there's no there's not even a seed of that in any of the hee-roo canonical books in fact um
[01:19:22] the the narrator of second maccabees 12 he he kind of goes through a bit more description of why
[01:19:29] and why what judas is doing here because there's no prior tradition or prior teaching to base this on
[01:19:41] so in other words i almost feel like the author of maccabees is saying this is new there's there's
[01:19:48] no there's no foundation for this okay so um plus we there's so many things we could talk about
[01:19:56] we just you know the the fact that first maccabees says right there's not a single profit amongst the
[01:20:02] community right so it's an implicit way of saying first and second maccabees weren't inspired right
[01:20:08] because right they weren't written by a prophet so anyhow there's lots of things we could talk about
[01:20:14] that that our roman catholic friends find interesting i'm sure but yeah yeah and and you know
[01:20:20] i hope it's a friendly debate you know and i think yeah but but it's a great
[01:20:24] uh thing to look into and i find with so many subjects you you start reading because you want
[01:20:29] an answer one question and then it opens up oh yeah whole new vistas of understanding the church
[01:20:34] and understanding you know the the way that these doctrines have been talked about and
[01:20:40] all that kind of stuff and so it's a great deep dive and uh yeah but this is a fun conversation
[01:20:45] thank you john so much for this we're gonna put some links to your books so people can
[01:20:49] check out those resources and just appreciate your scholarship in this area and thank you for
[01:20:54] taking the time to talk with us about this subject yeah thanks brian for having me on
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