SPEAKER_03 0:07

Welcome to Tech Support, a podcast of the Mematilian Church of Primex, where we encourage and equip people to interact with the biblical text. Today I'm your host, Tim Martin, and Brian, my usual co-host, is out of town. But however, we have in his place a wonderful guest that I will uh introduce in just a moment. Today's podcast is going to continue our series entitled Inc. and Inspiration, and today's episode is entitled Why These Books. I am very, very pleased to have with us today a guest, uh Dr. Ed Gallagher, who is a professor of Christian scripture at Heritage Christian. I think he's been there at Heritage Christian University for about 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

He is his PhD from Hebrew Union College. He is responsible for publishing and producing many scholarly books and journal articles, and also congregational level studies have been very useful for the church. His areas of expertise include Greek and Hebrew, septurigent studies, uh Satan, and today's topic of discussion, the canonization process of the Bible. So I'm very thankful to have you here and I appreciate your time and being here today. And so as we launch into this uh conversation, I used a couple of, you know, we use a couple of words like canon and canonization. Can you help define for our listeners what those words, which are not everyday words that people use, but they'll hear them if they hear conversations about what belongs in the Bible, what doesn't belong in the Bible. Can you can you help define that and and and set those parameters for us?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me on. Uh the term canon in discussions these days about the Bible typically means typically means what books are in and what books are out. And the reason that word means that is that our English word canon goes back to a Latin word that goes back to a Greek word that goes back to a Hebrew word, that means measuring rod. And so it has to do with what material measures up to a particular standard. So the biblical books, if they're in the canon, they measure up to some sort of standard. And we can apply that to other contexts as well. Sometimes these days we'll talk about the Harry Potter canon or the Star Wars canon, and we'll, you know, which which material belongs to the Star Wars canon? Are the TV shows a part of the canon or not? And and what we mean by that is are they authoritative? Are they normative? Does like if if um if there's a new Star Wars movie that comes out, does it need to be in harmony with which which material does it need to be in harmony with all those books that have been published about Star Wars, or can it ignore those and like contradict them and stuff? Uh what material is actually normative? And and I think that's a helpful way to think about the biblical books as well. When we're saying that books are in the canon, we mean that they measure up, but that also that they are authoritative, that they're normative. And if they're outside the canon, they might be fantastic books, but they're not normative. You can disagree with them, is the basic idea.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

Aaron Powell And when you say normative, I think most of our listeners are familiar with authoritative, but normative, if I was going to find that, they are things that direct our theology and our beliefs and our practices that we would look at and say, hey, they they are normal and they are the boundaries of what we're going to do as a Christian Christianity. Yeah, I mean sufficient. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Very similar to authoritative. I think of normative in in that way, and that you basically, like I said earlier, you can't disagree with it, or at least according to like traditional Christian theology, you're not supposed to disagree with it. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You will.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

You might. You might, but you might be a little out of bounds.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the the again, these are canonical, so they are authoritative. You're supposed to sort of submit to their authority and let them govern your theology and practice.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: They may be orthodox, we might say. Yeah, that's right. And cover orthodoxy and orthopraxy. We're not going to get into all those words. Trevor Burrus, you mentioned authoritative, and in my notes for this, I have the word scripture, the capital S scripture. Usually when we throw that term around as Christians, we're talking about something that is authoritative. And so could we equate the word scripture with canon? You know, I heard people say sometimes all canon is scripture, but not all scripture is in the canon if we don't have, for example, Paul's, one of Paul's letters to the church in Corinth, his very first letter, or the Church to Laodicea, is that scripture? We don't know, but we would refer to things in our canon, just like you said, as authoritative capital S scripture. Is that a fair parallel to make?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Yes, I would certainly be hesitant. I myself in the 21st century would be hesitant to say that there is any such thing as scripture outside the canon. I also, like you said, I'm a I'm a scholar of this, and I I've done research on early Christian ways of thinking through this, early Jewish ways of thinking through this. I think when we when we think about it historically, like how did these ideas develop? How did early Christians think about these things? It does seem to me that they did make a distinction between scripture and canon, that the canon was a bounded collection of scripture, that they they weren't saying that the canon is all the scripture that there is, but that it is uh scripture that can be held up as the standard, as authoritative, whereas you know, may uh maybe there could be scripture outside of this, but it is not agreed upon. Uh uh maybe we'll get to like how did they come to these conclusions. And a lot of it, at least one of them, one of the ways they thought, early Christians thought through this is what is agreed upon by everybody. And that's that's those those documents can be held up as sort of standard or canonical or authoritative. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

No, that's a great segue. I'm actually going to skip over one question and go to the next because you said that uh we'll talk primarily today. I know Christians are most focused about the New Testament as their authoritative scripture, but certainly I know in the early church the Old Testament was read, it was cherished, it was studied. It really was the Bible of the early church until we see this canonization process come to complete fruition. Uh one of the things that we want to talk about today is exactly the Old Testament, New Testament. You can talk about those separately. My understanding is we may not know as much about maybe the process of the Old Testament as we do the New Testament, but you you mentioned you at Scott. So what are some of those certain criteria that were applied to the Old Testament and then maybe differently or the same to the New Testament to say, hey, we're going to define these things uh in that way? I've heard some things like, did they have any connection to an apostle, their antiquity of their writings? So could you run us down in some of those things? And are those things that we really have spelled out for us in early Christianity, or is early Christianity really not given us the, hey, here's how we decided the books in just plain speaking?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah. Probably I I guess I would say the number one factor is, and this might be going around the other way, but the number one factor was the reception. Like, in other words, um how early did Christians start to cite and rely on particular writings? Let's say, I mean, we're talking about the New Testament here for a moment, and let's just say um, you know, the the Epistle of James, for instance, how early can you document? And I and I'm saying like early, there were early Christians who made this kind of research. Uh is the Epistle of James authoritative? Hmm. How early can we document that Christians actually relied upon it, cited it in theological debate where it seemed to be normative? How widespread was it? Did churches over in Gaul, France, did they cite it and churches in Palestine, and churches in Italy, and churches in North Africa? How widespread was the attestation of this? Or was it more localized, you know, for uh writings that are now outside our canon, like the Shepherd of Hermas or the Epistle of Barnabas? Those sorts of criteria were applied to them as well. Um, and for that, I'm thinking especially about somebody like Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote in the first half of the fourth century, uh, he wrote a lot of things, but one of the things he wrote was a church church history. Some of the listeners may have heard of the ecclesiastical history of Eusebius. And and that was one of the things he says in the church history. I am writing this in part to collect attestation, testimony from early Christians earlier than him, about the books of the Bible. I'm I'm wanting to trace out which books of, especially of the New Testament, he was interested in that, because he sort of took the Old Testament as a given, but the New Testament was still a little bit uncertain as to which books actually belong, and so he wanted to trace that out. And so that's the way he organized his material, and eventually in his work, he came up with a list of of early Christian books, and he kind of categorized it. And and it had a lot to do with reception. And and we can talk about his list, which I think is I mean, there are a lot of lists. His is one of the very for earliest for New Testament books, and it's really interesting. Um but I think that that reception category is sort of the in my mind the premier one, but it is sort of like a a second layer of criteria because like we'll we'll it sort of begs the question, why were they received? You know, okay, so it's widely received as authoritative, but why was it widely well then you go to, well, presumably, you know, it was authorship, it's connected to an apostle, it's early, and all these things. Um, and and that was, I mean, the basic idea is it needed to be from the you know, the first century. It needed to the the early Christian writing needed to be connected with the an apostle. Need either from an apostle or connected with an apostle. And you had to have, you know, uh I don't know if verifiable is the right way to say it, but had to have good reasons to think this. So, you know, one of the one of the writings that has long been questioned, and I and I still uh am not quite sure the best way to think through this, but it's the epistle to Hebrews. I'll okay, I myself do not believe that the epistle to Hebrews was written by the Apostle Paul. Me neither. Uh I I find it very difficult to reconcile, if it were written by the Apostle Paul, especially to reconcile Hebrews 2, verse 3, where the writer of Hebrews seems to say, I did not receive the gospel directly from Jesus, I received it from people who heard it from Jesus. Well, that doesn't sound like Paul to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Uh especially that would go against Galatians. Yes, I received this directly. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

I didn't receive it from any human. I received it. I don't think Paul wrote Hebrews, but that that issue, who wrote Hebrews? That was a big deal in the early church. And uh it does seem to me that within the early church, the authorship issue of Hebrews was maybe not the deciding factor, but it was one of the important factors in thinking through does Hebrews belong in the New Testament or not? And it it one a a modern researcher might conclude that ultimately Hebrews was received within the New Testament because there was this mis identification of the author that people assumed Paul wrote it or thought Paul wrote it, and therefore they became more comfortable with receiving it. How should I think through that? I mean, I don't think Paul wrote it. I I don't I mean that honestly, that's a that's a sort of a confusing, difficult issue. I'll just say here's the way I think through it. Even if that is right, that the early Christians misidentified the author as Paul, and that led them to become more comfortable with receiving it as canonical scripture. The way I would think through that is, well, the Holy Spirit guided the process, we have what we have now, we can accept it as canonical scripture, and we can be critical about the authorship issue and even reject Pauline authorship, distinguish in in distinction from the way the early Christians thought about it, but we still receive it as our scripture, and the Holy Spirit can use even a process that sometimes got some things wrong, like the authorship of Hebrews, in order to give us the scripture that God wants us to have.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Well, that makes sense. You know, and it goes along with, you know, I've always heard and understood that, you know, the the four canonical gospels that we have. Of course, you mentioned like this apostolic connection. Well, certainly we'd say Matthew and John, the traditional, even though those gospels don't name their author, their traditional and the manuscript evidence and tradition, Matthew and John, we would say, yep, those guys are apostles. And then Mark is associated with Peter, and then Luke, of course, associated with Paul. And so the four canonical gospels, Acts and the thirteen letters of Paul. I know we have some arguments about uh Paul's authorship of Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the pastorals, but for them I think they assumed it that those as far back as we have criteria and evidence, which I tell people it's not like we have thousands of pages of evidence on this, that they were regarded as canonical because of those connections. But then as you wandered into some of the uh general or Catholic epistles that don't have a specific target, such as you know, first, second, third, first, second, third John, uh, you know, Peter's writings, I know 2 Peter sometimes got some struggle. Even today, people talk about Pauline uh Petrine authorship of that, and so and then Revelation, all the way to the time of Martin Luther, who tried to who tried to get it out of the the canon as well. And so I I think some people think that it was all as as soon as the the gong rang on the end of the first century that all these things were settled, and I like how you mentioned earlier that it may very well depend on your geographic location. And sometimes I think that we uh because we put such emphasis in the Restorationist tradition on the pattern of the church established in Acts, we have to realize that Acts only gives us a glimpse of a very particular window of churches that we don't have anything information of North Africa, or we know that the church spread northeasterly uh into Syria and Slovenia, places of that nature, and also, like you mentioned, in Gaul. Uh we have obviously the church there. We have Irenaeus, who is uh a church father that we hear from the latter part of the second century. We don't have much information about that, and then we've got really, really limited information on who uh had what books of the Bible and and accepted it. Some people say, well, because Athanasius said he had this 27-book list in the late fourth century, everybody agreed on that. Well, no, everybody didn't agree on that, and it went through. And so I think as we think about, I really appreciate that early acceptance, and also I've also heard you tell me what you think here that also it was it's orthodoxy, meaning does that book conform to the rest of the canon, but then yet we don't have the canon to say it. But for example, if there was something in a book that completely disagreed with something in the Gospel of John, then it's probably going to have a hard time when we say, well, now look, John, he was eyewitness to these things, and this book over here doesn't say anything. I remember you told me something one time about canonical books. You said, Go read them and you see if they belong in the canon, and and I've always applied that as a litmus test was in addition to acceptance and usage and I can't say apos apostolicity, or or I can't even spell that word. Uh but also it's did they fit within what and I know this formation wasn't instantaneous. What was do they agree with other books that had been accepted early on?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, I think that was an important criterion as well. They did have this notion of like orthodoxy, what is orthodox doctrine, even when they didn't have a bounded collection of scripture. Um, they they had a developing collection of scripture that didn't have firm borders. And I'm thinking like in the second century, uh, which I don't think anybody these days would really say, well, I think the canon was closed, you know, already, and everybody knew exactly what was in the Bible and what wasn't already in the second century. I don't think anybody would say that uh these days. But we do have these, you know, statements of faith from the second century, from Irenaeus, maybe from Justin Martyr and from others, uh, summarizing, let me let me tell you what Christians believe. You know, an early form of a creed. And they sort of summarized the, you know, what do we believe about God? What do we believe about Jesus? What do we believe about the gospel, about the Holy Spirit, about the church, about baptism, things like this. And they would summarize it. And here is what everybody believes a statement of faith, a um, you know, uh the canon of faith. They would, they would call it the canon of faith. Everett Ferguson has their confession of faith. Their confession of faith. Everett Ferguson has a book, a little book he published 10 years ago called The Canon of Faith, I think, about this exact issue, about how people summarize the faith even before the time of having a canon of scripture. They had a canon of faith, uh, a standard of faith. And so that was one way that I mean Irenaeus is very explicit about it. I can reject Gnostic doctrine uh and the Gnostic writings because it doesn't conform to the canon of faith, because it it's not orthodox, you know. Um, and and I think that was a way that people judged other scriptures. I I should say about the New Testament, you know, this this reception, I I find the reception issue that seemed to be so important for Eusebius and others uh a really interesting and helpful way of thinking about it because you can push it back, like you said, to the second century. Already in the second century, you've got, well, Irenaeus says there are four gospels, that's it. Those four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those are the gospels.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

That's about 180 or something. Yeah, about the second century, I want our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And Irenaeus knows there is such a thing as the gospel of Thomas, but that's not canonical. There is such a thing as the, you know, I forget what all he names, but Marcion's got his gospel, and there are other gospels. There are these apocryphal gospels. Marce uh Irenaeus has heard of them, the Gospel of Judas. I think he names the Gospel of Judas. But they are not part of it. It's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the ones. Does he speak for everybody? Look, I don't know that he speaks for everybody, but I do know that there's hardly there is no what we would consider orthodox or mainstream early Christian writer who disagrees with him. I mean, it's uh whether he speaks for everybody in 180, I don't know, but very quickly in other parts of the empire, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, and then just generally everywhere, uh, very quickly in the third, everybody agreed. Yeah, those four Gospels, those are it. Uh, there are other gospels, they're just not the ones that we accept as canonical. Paul's letters. Look, we might disagree on what exactly counts as a Pauline letter, especially on Hebrews. Some people say yes, some people say no, but everybody agrees Paul's letters are canonical. Whatever they are, they are canonical. And, you know, pretty much there's either 13 or 14 of them. And uh and so very, you know, in the second century, they're saying Paul's letters are canonical. Well, there's most of the New Testament Acts already in the second century, Acts. Every well, at least we have no record of a disagreement that no, I don't think Acts is canonical. All but already in the second century we know that that people were holding this up. So th there is very early I mean, as you said just a moment ago, about as early as you can trace anything, already there it's not a fully set 27 book New Testament, but it's pretty close.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

Yeah, you have a if you just have Luke. And Acts put together, you've got more literature than almost the rest of the New Testament. And I know early on, and some people would say, well, how come some books didn't get? I know, for example, like in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, he mentions Paul's letters to you. And so we only have one letter, so we know he had others. We certainly know Paul refers to a previous letter in what we call 1 Corinthians, and some even argue that it may have been a severe letter in between our first and second Corinthians. And Paul even tells the Colossians, I want you to have this letter read of the church in Laodicea, and you read the letter to the Laodiceans. And so we know Paul wrote other ones. They may just not have made it, or maybe they weren't copied as prolifically. To me, it's more amazing that we have Colossians, because Colossae was destroyed by an earthquake, you know, and Laodicea rose to more prominence uh than that. And so it's uh interesting you mentioned those other gospels, and and that's something I did want to talk about today uh as we get to our next question.

SPEAKER_04 23:00

That was twenty-three minutes, cuz. Yeah, we'll let it cool down.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

No, I think what I'm I had in my notes and I know we talked about, but I think I want to continue our focus on you mean to keep recording? Okay, you're just gonna cut all this out. Because we're it we're off the record here. Yeah. Uh well we're on the record, but we're gonna be off it when it gets done. I thought about trying to think about the uh you tell me what we think about timing because we got uh it's four o'clock, you got time, but uh we really don't like to run much over like 45 minutes or fifty minutes. It may be different, we have a guest. I I may kind of abandon my thoughts about the Old Testament canonical process, but I may mention as we go into this next section, as I mentioned I may set this as a pattern. We'll talk about like the gospel to the Ibionites or the Gospel to the Hebrews or according to the Egyptians, things that we see uh mentioned, and I think it's worthwhile for us to talk about some books, like an Apostolic Fathers, that we find bound up in Christian codices right alongside the New Testament books. You mentioned the Shepherd of Ramas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Did I K. What I may do is say, hey, I know a lot of people may be familiar with why does the the New Revised Standard Version or the Catholic Bible have all these apocryphal books in it in between the two testaments and uh and that well don't forget the King James 1611 King James had the very same thing, so don't that these books were not viewed as say it's not so um I think many editions of the King James Bible. But what I may say, not to discuss those, but to say, hey, just like the Jews don't we don't see those viewed as authoritative scripture even by the Jews, they are informative. And so that way I c we can bridge into the con I'm not even gonna say the word pseudopse pseudopigraphal, uh but people will know about those books. And I so I may say other books like One Enoch and things like that. Just like those reviewed, those can be looked at as very informative about Second Temple Judaism and the world that Jesus lived in. Even though some of these books that you've mentioned, can they be informative to us? Even even the the Nagamadi scriptures or Gnostic gospels, they can at least tell us about some of the theology that Christian developed, even though it may be a an offshoot that's unorthodox. So I think what I may do is we're not gonna spend any time talking about the Old Testament canon being formed and getting into all that because I think that would could be its own episode. Um because as far as I know, we don't know it. I mean, it's kind of like we we think it showed up mostly like we have it now, because I was going to talk about Josephus, what, has a 22 book list, but he combines Samuel King's Chronicles, all that stuff, Ezra and Nehemiah. And so I think we may as stick with that, but we may use the the pattern of that as a segue into talking about, okay, we certainly think the apocryphal books and other Jewish literature written between the testaments may not be canonical, but it is very informative for understanding apocalyptic thinking of things of that nature. So is that okay? We can go in that nature. Uh because I I think that would be better with what we want to do. So I want to talk about that. I think we've taken care of uh and done a very good job of of taking care of that.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

So I want you to feel great. I don't want you to feel good, I want you to feel comfortable, I don't want you to feel rock solid.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Continuing to think through that, you mentioned a few things, and like when you talk about other gospels that existed, we certainly know even from the testimony of Luke in Scripture, it says many people have tried to sit down and and make an account of these things, and so I've kind of done a research paper here for you, Theophilus. I've got some ad libbing there, uh, and and and tried to get together so you can be confident uh in the things that you know. So even though some of these gospels, our our listeners may be familiar if they've done any kind of stuff, the gospel of Thomas, uh and isn't there a gospel of Thomas and an infancy gospel of Thomas? And then the Gospel of Judas got some press a few years ago. Uh but there are other gospels that are mentioned in early Christian literature, so sort of like the Gospel to the Hebrews, uh, the gospel to the Ebionites, uh, that very early Christians mention, uh, but they were not accepted as canonical. And so it made me think about, and I want you to kind of elaborate. We know when it comes to Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism, many people may be familiar with some of the books that, for example, may appear in the New Revised Standard Version Bibles, or some people may say, well, they appear in the Catholic Bibles, uh, known as the Apocrypha, books like One and Two Maccabees, uh, some uh some additions to Daniel, uh, other books that that are not viewed even within Judaism as the same as Torah. Uh, and I know that different Jews have different views of Torah's authority versus the writings and versus the prophets, but but they are useful for understanding the world that developed between the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the time of Jesus, even other works like One Enoch and things like that, they were useful for understanding that. So even though we may have books that may not have made the cut, quote unquote, into the canon, are these books, the ones that we have still extant, the ones that still exist, are they in the same way useful or should we look at them as some even the Gnostic writings you mentioned, should we look at them as some sort of abhorrent evil over here that we should never approach because they're not within the sacred sphere of canon? Or what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

You're thinking of the early Christian writings, not the early Jewish writings.

SPEAKER_03 28:41

Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about the early Christian writings. I was just using that kind of as a model to compare uh we know that you know Jesus never quotes from the book of Tobit or none of the New Testament writers do that. But what about these other writings? What can they tell us and and why did they not seem to or they did not make it into the New Testament? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

I mean, specific like the gospels. We have all kinds of apocryphal gospels.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Um and apocrypha is a word that means hidden or in in scholarly lingo means didn't make it.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Right. In this context, when you talk about the apocryphal gospels, you're talking about the the the gospels that are that are how shall I describe gospel meaning account about Jesus or something like that that is not in the New Testament. That's the apocryphal part.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

That'd be perfect.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Um and so I I say account about Jesus or something like that because there's this wonderful I and I'll say why I'm calling it wonderful in a moment, but a wonderful apocryphal gospel called the infancy gospel of James or the Protevangelium of James that isn't really about Jesus. It's more about Mary and it's about her birth and then about her growing up and becoming pregnant with Jesus and the very young childhood of Jesus, but uh it's not so much about Jesus as it is about Mary. At any rate, does it tell us anything about, like just taking that as an example, pro the Proto-Evangelium of James? I don't expect to get any sort of historical information out of it about the actual life of Mary or the birth of Jesus. I get-I mean, theoretically it could be possible. I think the Proto-Vangelium of James was written sometime in the second century. You could imagine that let's when did Mary, the mother of Jesus, die? I don't, I don't know. I'll just say maybe she died in like 50 A.D. Well, you could imagine that people who knew her passed down stories uh for the next hundred years, and that somebody in 150 A.D. wrote them down in the Proto-Evangelium of James. It's theoretically possible. I just don't when I read the Proto-Evangelium of James, I'm like, eh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Well, if you take it as that, is it's oral tradition that may become very legendary. Yes, right and mythological in its in its it's there's maybe a kernel of truth in there and some origin and truth, but we wouldn't take it to be like this is a biography of George Washington. You know, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Yeah, it's more like Parson Weem's, you know, the cherry tree version of George Washington. It's like, well, I mean, there might be some interesting stories, and there could possibly be tied to something historical, but it would be hard to sort out the the colonel from the chaff on that. And that's that's sort of best case scenario, I think. Um we when I say we have all kinds of apocryphal gospels, I mean like about 40. If you get on Amazon right now and just type in apocryphal gospels and you get a collection, I've got a few collections on my shelf back in my office. One is a penguin edition by Simon Gatherickle, where he translated it, and there's about 42, 43. Some of those are just like very small chunks, like just a scrap of papyrus found in the Egyptian desert, but it mentions Jesus, so it gets uh and we don't have any context. Some are much larger. So the Gospel of Judas, the Proto-Vangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. By the way, the infancy gospel of Thomas was just sort of the the inspiration for a movie that came out. Uh Nicolas Cage starred as Joseph. I did not see the movie, but I this was in 20 it may have been 2026, 2025, maybe. What was it called? The Carpenter Sun, I think was the name of the movie. I I do it did not get good reviews like many Nicholas Cage movies. Yes, right. But it was in some ways inspired by the stories in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which which have those really funny, interesting stories about, you know, the like Jesus making the clay birds and and then giving life to them. That's in the infancy gospel of Thomas. And then also there's the mean boy Jesus who's kills some children and brings them back to life. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

That doesn't quite fit with the Jesus we've done.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yes, exactly. So I think some of these things, like the infancy gospel of Thomas, why, how did this get written? Why would somebody write such a thing? I imagine that it was motivated not by somebody who thought, well, let me let me put one over on people, or let me, you know, I'm going to write the real story of Jesus or anything. I imagine, I'm trying to judge it sympathetically, that it was motivated by, you know, the same sorts of things that we sometimes sit around and think. Like, what would it have been like to be a friend of Jesus as a four-year-old or an eight-year-old? Could you have ever won at kickball or dodgeball? What would it have been like to get a ball thrown at you by Jesus? You know, how much would that hurt? Uh, you know, would he have used all his strength? And, you know, so you have these sort of funny little questions, and then somebody in the second century thought, I'm gonna write, you know, I'm gonna just write write some stories down just to give some people, you know, help brainstorm uh ideas about what Jesus may have been like. I don't think he did the best job of that.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

But who knows what people would have been making up about because you have that gap really from birth to about twelve, and then from twelve to about thirty, where we don't know anything about him, and a lot of things that seem have happened in his life, you know, like his brothers, they probably never got away with telling a lie because Jesus would be like, ah, that's not true. I can read your mind.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

So I don't I don't expect these things have any historical value for the actual life of Jesus, but they do show us what we're Christians thinking about in the second century, in the third century, in the fourth century. And then we have those Gnostic Gospels. There you get like the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas, and there are many others. The Gospel of Thomas fits in here, sort of proto-Gnostic. Um and and they I think mostly have no value, again, for telling us something about Jesus himself, but for g giving us some of the concerns of an early Christian sect of Gnostics. Now, let me bring out the Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Thomas is the one gospel that scholars sometimes look at as maybe it gives us something close to the historical Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas is purely a sayings gospel. There is no action at all. It is there are 114 sayings, Jesus said, and then there's a saying. That's all the Gospel of Thomas is. And so maybe it reflects um an early Christian collection of actual sayings of Jesus. I I don't think anybody would say in the Gospel of Thomas, like all of them go back to the actual Jesus. But some of them might, some of them might, some of them are actually very, very similar to what we have in the canonical gospels, some of them are very, very different from what we have in the canonical gospels, and then some of them seem like, oh, that could sound sort of like the Jesus that I know from the New Testament, but it's a little different. Uh so I mean, maybe some of the Gospel of Thomas goes back to an early collection. But the Gospel of Thomas as a whole, I think, again, like at the advice I gave you long ago, if if you're wondering whether or not this should belong in the New Testament, just read it. I I am I think for your listeners here, I'm not concerned that they will proclaim it to be a lost uh insight into Jesus. Just go to saying 114, where uh Peter says about Mary. This is one of the most famous sayings. Peter says about Mary, what's she doing here? Because she's a woman, and Jesus says, Don't worry about it, Peter. I'm gonna turn her into a man, and then she'll be able to go to heaven.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

And uh, that doesn't quite fit in.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Strangely 21st century almost uh But yeah, exactly what was going on in the second century when when that was you know, that's a different thing, but it certainly seems misogynistic. And um, you know, so there there are other sayings like that in the Gospel of Thomas. But um so some of the apocryphal gospels have some value, but usually not any value for the actual Jesus, just for second and third century Christians. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

When I think about some of the earlier ones, even than that, uh you know what we refer to, the the collection of them we refer to today as kind of the apostolic fathers, where we have uh books you mentioned earlier, like The Shepherd of Ramos, the Epistle of Barnabas, Didi Kay, uh there's a writing from Clement of Rome. I know one Clement is typically attributed to him, but there's arguments about the two Clement. Some of these we do find, and if you read them, like the Didi K just means the teaching of the it means that is a short for the teaching of the twelve apostles. If you read in them, matter of fact, in Restorationist tradition, we would agree very much with what they have to say about baptism and perhaps about the Lord's Supper, maybe the method of baptism uh that's described in there, maybe something different from our traditional interpretation. But these books were obviously studied by early Christians because sometimes we find them bound up in codices, which would be an ancient book essentially, with with papyri or parchment bound together in a book form that was somewhat peculiar to Christians, that we'll find these in there, not meaning that they thought they were sacred scripture, but that they had good teachings in them, uh and and like the shepherd of Ramos is a some visionary literature, not really like a revelation, but similar with a guide and things of that nature. Do you think looking back more at those which don't have ridiculous statements about some changing someone's gender, do they have a little bit higher value and did they have a little bit in the we get back to our canonization thinking, are they mentioned in some of the early canonical lists or some of the books that are now not in the canon mentioned in some of the early canonical lists that we have from like the second, third century?

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yeah. So the the writings you name these days are collected together. There are several writings collected together, early Christian writings, Orthodox writings that are so not like the Gnostic writings, but these are Orthodox writings that are and they're collected together under the title Apostolic Fathers. And so again, you can get on Amazon, you can type in Apostolic Fathers, and you can find a collection of some of these things, the writings that you named. And yeah, they they have a lot of value, I think, for understanding early Christian uh beliefs and practices and like say baptism, seeing how did they practice baptism, how did they practice the Lord's Supper, these prayers. Uh, and I'm here I'm thinking specifically about the Didic, or just other things uh that that um early Christians did, you can read it in these writings, and they might give us uh, you know, I think sometimes they probably do give us insight into what was a first century church like. Even though these writings are typically not first century, they are usually maybe late first century, like first Clement is probably late first century. Ignatius's letters of the year. Ignatius maybe well, early second century is typically a date given for Ignatius. So there's some debate about his. And um but yeah, so even if even if the writings are second century, they pr they probably preserve in some cases. It might be hard to tell which one, which cases, but in some cases, traditions from the first century, the way early Christians thought about things. They they were, I think, I think universally revered. That's not to say considered canonical or considered scripture, but respected. Okay. These were respected writings.

SPEAKER_03 41:11

That's a good term, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Like in the way that we might look back, I don't know, at the writings of Alexander Campbell and and give respect to them, even though we might disagree with them at times as well. Did they ever think of these things as scripture or canon? Definitely sometimes they did scripture, maybe not canon, if we can distinguish that. Let me give you an example. Origen is a controversial early Christian writer in Greek. Um in eventually he wound up in the city of Caesarea in Israel. Uh that's where he lived. He died in about 254. And at one point late in his life, he talked about the shepherd of Hermes, and he said the shepherd of Hermes is divinely inspired. So that's interesting. That seems to suggest that he thought it might be like worthy of the title scripture. But he se he recognized also that this is not an opinion widely shared. This goes back to the um reception criterion. That that it's not that the that the shepherd of Hermes is not widely accepted as um you know, a writing from God, that scripture. And so he didn't I think that means he did not consider it canonical.

SPEAKER_04 42:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

Even if he thought it was scriptural. But he might say it could be read in the churches. He might. I don't think we actually have that testimony, but yeah, he might have said that. This by the way, this is near the end of his commentary on Romans, is where he says this. Because remember, in Romans, at the very end of Romans, you get this guy named Hermos, and Origen thought, well, it's the same guy. This is the shepherd of Hermos, that guy. And that writing is divinely inspired. He says that in his commentary on Romans. So uh you at least and and you at least get some Christians who seem to indicate that these writings are scriptural, definitely helpful. I tend to think of it in the sense of um like a modern-day analogy, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. I always recommend to Christians you ought to read Mere Christianity by C. If you haven't read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, read it. It's very helpful, it's great. You know, he has a just a wonderful writing style, way of thinking about Christianity. It's helpful, we ought to read it. I'm not on a campaign to add it to the Bible. That's not my goal. I'm not meaning that you can't disagree with it or you can't think, oh, he could have said this better, or anything like that. It's not canonical scripture. It's helpful. Well, I think the dedicate, it's helpful. The shepherd of Hermas, you can think. Of that as helpful, first and second Clement. And I think that's I don't see a good reason to say that early Christians didn't think about those things along those lines. So even if they sometimes cite these writings, well, I cite the mere Christianity all the time. I'm always citing C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis once said, you know, or or whatever, Abraham Lincoln or or Mark Twain.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: You may think his sound his thinking is sound, it's biblically based, it it's it it has some good theological points, but it's not normative or authoritative to use your earlier words. Uh and so neither were these, and I don't know that we see any Christians, you mentioned Origin, for example, that in uh that it may include them and and quote from them in the same way that like like when Justin Martyr said the memoirs of the apostles writ read in churches, I don't think he's including those in there. Most people think that he's probably talking about perhaps the four canonical gospels. It's arguable uh in saying that. And so these books if they don't appear in a lot of these early canonical lists, which I know you've written on that, we've talked about that the Gospels and Acts and then the thirteen letters of Paul, which like you said comprise the bulk majority of the New Testament. Tell us a little bit as we as we kind of think through the the end of this canonization process and we we alluded to this earlier, some of the other epistles uh and and including Revelation, I think you talked about Hebrews very well. Is that does there seem to be, I think Eusebius uh disputes some of these general epistles. Uh kind of finish up with that process of when did those begin to get accepted and when do we finally find out or we discover that there's some writings or some councils or something. Everybody thinks the council of Nicaea was about and it was not, it was about Arianism, if if my memory served. It didn't mention the canon, it wasn't a debate at all. But there were councils that did talk about some list. Kind of finish out that process a little bit for us uh on the the books that we do have in our 27 book boundary that maybe took a little while to to find acceptance.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Um I think the best way to know what did early Christians think was in the canon is when they tell you this is in the canon. And that's you mentioned the canon list, and that's that's uh where they tell you that is there are actual lists of books. Here are the lists of the biblical canon. And I mentioned this earlier that Eusebius does this, and he divides it into different categories, and and uh according to reception, so he had 22, and I'm counting the book of Revelation. He was a little waffly on the book of Revelation, but I'll just try to make it easier at the moment. He had 22 books that were everybody accepts these books. These are widely accepted, universally accepted. Rock solid books, 22 of them. And uh and then there he then he said, and there are five books that are he called the Greek word was antelegomena. They are spoken against. That is to say, they're disputed. It's a little less certain. And let me uh tell you the five books, and these are all Catholic epistle books, general epistles. So it's James, Jude, Second Peter, 2nd and 3 John. So out of there are in our Bibles today, there are seven Catholic epistles, and so it's 1 Peter and 1 John were everybody accepted those. Those are the only two everybody accepted. The others are like, well, I don't know, we're not sure about that. And why would that be? Well, probably that I mean, there you just think about the books of the Bible that you rely on most. Probably those five that were the antelogomena, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2nd, and 3 John, are like, well, those are not the ones I rely on the most. I'm I'm always citing Matthew and John, I'm always citing Romans and Acts. You know, sometimes I'll do a study of James and I hardly ever look at 2 Peter, 2nd, and 3 John and Jude. It just, you know, is what it is. I'm not saying they're not important. It's just that they they're short, they don't have a whole lot in there. I rely on other people.

SPEAKER_03 48:15

A lot of sermons owned Jude.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Yeah, exactly. And and I think that's the way it was that in the early church as well. These are just short, they're just not used a whole lot, even if people didn't necessarily dispute them, uh their authorship or something like that. They just didn't show up a whole lot. And so for Eusebius, he couldn't track I said he tracked down what did did Clement of Alexandria cite it? Did Origen cite it? Did these early Christian writers cite it? And there's just not a whole lot of citations of ju he couldn't track it down.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

Not nearly what you might have for like the Sermon on the Mount or something.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Yeah, everybody talks about it. Yes, everybody's citing that. And so he he put it in this disputed category. Well, it wasn't much after that that you get something like Athanasius and these other uh writers who come up with canon lists who ha have the 27 books, and that is pretty much settled. And by the end of the fourth century, more or less, you mentioned earlier there's you know, revelation is there's some dispute about that.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

It rears its ugly head in the Reformation period. Uh uh Mr. Cause that doesn't look like I know Martin Luther had some concerns that this doesn't sound like the Jesus, this wrathful, you know, angry, vengeful Jesus is not the turn the other cheek Jesus. And and to be honest with you, I think he's just like, I don't understand his book. And I'm gonna put it in there. And so one of the things I mean we we say Catholic epistles, you and I have been bouncing that term back and forth. I want our listeners to know that that doesn't mean they're the Roman Catholic epistles. Catholic is just the word that means universal. Uh and so a lot of times we call that general epistles. These can't canonical lists, I know like maybe if I'm trying to go by memory, the councils of hippo, council of cause later part of the fourth century, they also have uh either 26 or 27 books just like we do today.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Yeah, let me mention about that. So we have we have different kinds of councils. The like the if the Roman Catholic Church recognizes different kinds of councils. You know, in Churches of Christ, we don't recognize councils at all, but um but there are regional councils, there are ecumenical councils. The ecumenical councils are the ones that are like those are the authoritative councils. It's sort of like the difference between the Supreme Court of the United States and a circuit court. Okay. A circuit court has authority within the states that it runs, but the, you know, whatever, the 11th circuit that might have authority in Tennessee doesn't have any authority in Alaska. Alaska doesn't care about the 11th Circuit at all. But everybody's got to care about the Supreme Court. Uh the ecumenical councils are like the Supreme Court, and the regional councils are like for just the region. And so there were there were no ecumenical councils. There were no ecumenical councils that considered the which books were in or out until you get uh the council of Trent in 1546.

SPEAKER_03 51:09

Well, Hippo and Carthage, as I mentioned, were more local African. Those are regional councils.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Yeah, just regional North African councils. They do consider uh the canonical books in the late fourth century in North African councils, but those are not considered ecumenical councils. And so did not settle the issue for anybody except for the area where they lived.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

You know, I I think that you know, there's a lot of different lists out there, and I'll recommend uh Dr. Gallagher has a book on the early canonical lists. It's a very good book. I used it in my dissertation, as a matter of fact. We have things that are even debated like the Moratorian canon, which I understand is a Latin uh fragment written in Latin in the eighth century, but we think it's a copy of a Greek uh writing from the second century, and it has a list. It starts off and the third gospel, Luke, so we know that there were two gospels before that. There are there is a lot of evidence, and uh there are a lot of canonical lists that help support the fact that we can rely on about as early as we can go back, certainly the gospels, Acts, Paul's epistles, Revelation Hebrew seems to step in and out of it, and then it's not very long until we see these general Catholic epistles. We know they were around, and we know they were being considered because Eusebius wouldn't have mentioned the early fourth century. And so finishing up our thoughts here, just about the last minute or two that we have here, there are different beliefs out there about God's hand in the canonical process. You know, was there a supernatural hand in it, like we believe that there was certainly a supernatural influence or really directive to the actual writers of these books? What do you what just a couple of in a in a minute or so, what are what are kind of the thoughts about that? What are your thoughts about that? I've kind of always been had mixed thoughts about it because it does seem to be so happenstance that if I feel like if God had a hand in it, it'd be settled by the year 100, you know, and it uh it would be done. But uh what are your what's out there on that? And just kind of finishing up with your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Well, yeah, my personal thoughts on it are that we I think we do need to trust that God was guiding the process. It is a messy process. Yes. I mean, but humans are involved and there's going to be mess and there's gonna be disagreement, but God is superintending that process to give us what we need. And ultimately, I think there there is something to this idea about trusting God and trusting our spiritual ancestors and just resting content with what they've done. I mean, when we think about the New Testament, I I understand there is actually disagreement today about the Old Testament, but when it comes to the New Testament, just about it's not quite true to say, but just about every church body, no matter where they l are or what kind of church they are, they accept the 27 books. And I feel like, I mean, that's that's a pretty good sign as well that God is super intent. Yeah, the process.

SPEAKER_03 54:16

I think I've heard might be the Ethiopic Church may have some different Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

The the Syrian Orthodox Church actually has a smaller they some of the Catholic epistles that had so much trouble in the earth. They didn't make it into the Syrian. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:28

I think that's a good point to talk about. Just between the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and the Protestant Churches, the 27th book is very agreed upon. It would be hard for anything in the world to be that agreed upon unless God had some kind of thinking in it. Thank you so much. We could have six episodes on this, and I appreciate you being here today, Dr. Gallagher. Uh we invite you, as we said, to watch this video and listen to this, and we look forward to uh your having a lesson tonight. Uh, this will be a little bit anachronistic when this comes out, but uh Dr. Gallagher is going to be speaking tonight on the book of James, one of the Catholic epistles that was disputed uh at our church. But I thank you for your time and coming up a little bit early and having a part in this uh process, and we appreciate those of you who are listening to us today. If you have any uh questions or anything, please uh email us or let us know, and we'll try to cover anything like that in our podcast. Thank you again for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

This is a podcast of the Mount Juliet Church of Christ. You can find more personal growth resources like this one at mountjuliot.org slash resources. The Mount Juliet Church of Christ exists to glorify God and make disciples by helping people grow in Christ, love one another, and serve others.