BibleProject - What's in your Bible?

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

In this episode, Tim and Jon give an overview of the entire Bible with a focus on the Hebrew Scriptures. They also spend some time going deep into the structure of the book from beginning to end. The Bible, like any other book, experienced human revision. The guys talk about what it means for the Bible to be a work of literary genius created by humans and also the divine word of God. There’s a lot to unpack here––let’s go. In the first part of the episode (01:25-54:15), the guys talk about the structure of the Old Testament. In its earliest form, the Hebrew Bible is broken up into three sections called the Tanak. This is the structure that Jesus would’ve been familiar with, and understanding this helps us to better interpret the way Jesus talked about and referenced Scripture. In the last part of the episode (54:45-1:10:51), the guys talk about the New Testament. The New Testament is structured much differently than the Old Testament. Some of the books were meant to be taught in a church setting, and some were targeted at a specific group of people. The guys will explain why it’s important to understand the New Testament in this light. Video: This episode is designed to accompany our video called "What is the Bible?" You can view it on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak06MSETeo4 Book References: Complete Jewish Bible: An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and B'Rit Hadashah (New Testament) by David H. Stern Scripture References: Jeremiah 37 Show Music: Defender Instrumental by Rosasharn Music Blue Skies by Unwritten Stories Flooded Meadows by Unwritten Stories

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

In this episode of the Bible Project podcast, Tim and I continue our discussion on the composition of the Bible. And what it means for this book to be God's divine word. There's a tension here. The Bible emerged out of the history of Israel, but that also is met by another claim that the scriptural authors make about these writings themselves, that they are also a word from God. And so this fights us into the,

you could call it the paradox or the unique category of script the scriptures. It claim to be a, or the unique category of script scriptures. It claimed to be a divine and human word at the same time. We're gonna go deep into the structure of the Bible from beginning to end, starting with the Old Testament, which is primarily the history of ancient Israel. The Hebrew Bible is a minority report

on the history of Israel, told from the perspective of what during Israel's history before the exile was a minority group, prophets who believe that they were preserving the true heritage and history of Israel from Moses and that most of Israel had gone astray. We then talk about the New Testament books and how the disciples of Jesus claim

that Israel's story was being continued with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is a great conclusion to our overview of what is the Bible, which is all being boiled down into a video that you could find on our YouTube channel. Thanks for joining in. Here we go. So in the last episode of the podcast, we talked about how the Bible is composed. So we spent a lot of time talking about the difference between the Hebrew Bible, the Catholic Bible, the Eastern Orthodox Bible, and the Protestant Bible. And then we talked about the Bible just as the literature. What does it mean to be a book?

We talked about different types of books. And then we kind of created this metaphor as the Bible as an art project. And spent time talking about the literary genius of the Bible as an art project. And spent time talking about the literary genius of the Bible. Talked about being people of the book and how that's part of our Christian identity. And then I just started asking you questions about what are the implications of all of this for how we teach kids the Bible. And we had a little discussion on that. So in this last half of the conversation, what I'd like to do is walk through the whole Bible and talk about what's actually in it and the order of it and give people a bird's

eye view of that. Yeah. Yeah, great, but that's a no small task. No small task. Just wrap that up in one podcast episode. So if readers of their English Bible, you open up to your Old Testament and but just go to the table contents at the beginning. You won't notice this, but there are four subsections to the Old Testament and the Christian Bible. Like the table contents won't break it up in the process. Yeah, I won't give you a little spaces between, it'll just be one long list of books going from Genesis all the way to Malachi. But you could break them up into four sections. Yeah, and historically there's a logic to it. Okay. And it's pretty evident once you see it.

So the first section is the first five books. Since somewhere in the early 200s AD has been called the Pentatook, which means, well, Penta. And Tukas is an old Greek word for scroll. So the scroll of five. So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy. Those are the five. You got it. The Penta.

That's right. They're connected with the figure of Moses in some way, traditionally. So that tells a story from creation to Abraham, the Exodus to Israel at Mount Sinai going through the wilderness and getting ready to enter the Promised Land. Yeah. And lots of key stories there. Yep. And then it ends with the death of Moses. After that comes another large block of books. The story just continues on. But in what you could call or has traditionally been called the history book.

So we go then into Joshua, he takes them into the Promised Land, the Judges, that covers a period when Israel's in the land organized by tribes, but with no centralized governing structures or anything, no kings. And that's why these judge characters would, they're just tribal, like tribal chiefdans who would arise to save. I wish it was called

enemies tribal chiefdans. I know I know I know it's a lot more interesting judges It doesn't work in English because we have the word judges in English means yeah a very specific thing that has no Real correspondence to what hmm the word meant and why why do we call them judges? Oh? That's it's a very old English translation. Okay. Of those who brought, those who brought order. Okay. They brought order.

They brought order, which is true, but they didn't do it by sitting in our seat with a robe. They were like looking at some sort of constitution. Yeah, they were tribal warriors who saved the people. What's the Hebrew word? Shofteem. Shofteem. Shofteem.

Judges. And then you get the short story of Ruth after Judges because the first line of Ruth is, in the days when the Judges were doing their thing. Okay, so it fits in that time period. Then comes first and second Samuel, which is oddly named because Samuel dies halfway at the end of first Samuel. It's not really about Samuel, it's more about David.

It's about David. Should, it's more about David. It should be called first and second David. King David. There you go. As we know him, King David. So this is when the history of Israel goes from being tribes with tribal chiefs. From the Federation of Tribes to centralized monarchy. Centralized monarchy.

That's right. Big shift in the history of Israel. Then, first and second kings moves us on to Solomon, and then after his... David's son. David's son, and then after he dies, there's a near civil war, and then the tribes split,

though the tribes up in the North, form an independent kingdom. The tribes in the South centered in Jerusalem, formed the people of Judah. And then they end up as two separate peoples' kind of coexisting intention. Until Second Kings ends with Babylon coming to town and taking everybody out. First and second Chronicles kind of get the shaft because they just retell the story of Genesis to Second Kings. Yeah. The whole history again. Yeah. The first word of Chronicles is Adam. And then the last word of Chronicles is an announcement that the people can go back from exile in Babylon, go back to the land.

So it's like you just read the whole story and now you get to read it again. Yeah, that's right. And first and second Chronicles mostly is a retelling of second Samuel and first and second kings. Dude, I just read this. But it's different. We'll talk about this. It's different in a really important way, but just slightly different. And so modern readers in this order, you just, you just, you just skip it and go to Ezra Nehemiah.

What most people do. in this order, you just skip it and go to Ezra Nehemiah. Most people do. Ezra Nehemiah are one book, and actually, they were one book, even in early Jewish and Christian tradition. They were separated into two books in the medieval period. I should know why I'll stop my head, but I don't know. It's not due to scroll length.

There was another factor, but I forget't know. It's not due to scroll banks. There was another factor, but I forget what it is. And then Esther is the story set in Persia about a Jewish community. The time of living. The time of living. During the time after the... After exile. Like a memory. But there's still Jewish people living.

But there's a community living there and it tells their story. Then after all that... So that was the first two sections. Penetude in the history book. That after all that, so that was the first, yep, for two sections, Pentateuch in the History Book. That was all the History Book, Joshua through Esther. Then you take a hard turn as you go down the table of contents and you move into the books of poetry.

So this next section is organized. It's all the poetry books. So Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. I remember as a kid, if you try to open your bubble right in the middle, it's usually Psalms. Usually land in Psalms. Oh yeah, and it's a fat book.

Because it's big book, right in the middle. It's a big book, right in the middle. Yeah, totally. So those are all books that are you gonna find? Entirely, well, yeah, 99% written in poetry. Altogether, they're connected to David and Solomon, even though the books inside them, well, the Psalms only half, less than half of the Psalm,

150 Psalms are connected to David explicitly. There's all kinds of other people, authors mentioned. And Proverbs says Proverbs of Solomon at the beginning, but then there are other authors mentioned in the book itself of different sections of the book, and Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. Job is an anonymous work. And then after the poetic books,

then you get the 15 books of the prophets. The three big ones. The biggies. Yep. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Oh, excuse me. Sorry, I'm already skipping ahead. There are 17 books in this section.

17 books in this section. Yeah, totally. It's 15 books in the Jewish order. I was, we'll talk about the Jewish order. We'll, in a second. So yeah, you get the three big ones. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then two smaller ones, sandwiched in there after Jeremiah is the lamentations, and then after Ezekiel and then two smaller ones sandwiched in there after Jeremiah is the

lamentations and then after Ezekiel comes Daniel. And then you get the 12 minor prophets in the Christian tradition. And they're minor because they're small because of the size of the books. Yeah, not not. It's not a rank in the military. No, yeah. It's not important. Yeah, these books are really important. So that's the shape of the Christian Old Testament.

Christian Old Testament. Penetrate. Penetrate, history, poetry, prophets. Yep, yeah. And I just know as a kid, becoming familiar with the Old Testament, yeah, you've got the penetrate, those are the like really old stories. Yeah. There's the history.

Yeah. That's where there's a lot of bloody, weird, crazy stuff. Then the poetry, that's where we would get some of our songs, worship songs. And then Proverbs was in there, so we could get some wisdom. And then Ecclesiastes in there, that's this weird book that we kind of ignore. And then the Prophet, it's just kind of like, yeah, good luck.

During Christmas time, we'll pull some Isaiah out or something. But beyond that, we're just kind of like, into the end of the world. This is some weird Hebrew poetry. We don't get it. Let's just move to the Gospels. Yeah. So that's my understanding of your experience.

Yeah. So yeah, there you go. So here's an understanding of your experience. So yeah, there you go. So here's an interesting historical factoid. That order and arrangement of the Old Testament, the earliest witness we have to that type of order, hard evidence is in a not a Hebrew Bible, but a Greek Bible. So a Greek translation.

Greek translation. People who spoke Greek were like, we want to translate the Hebrew scriptures into our language. That's right. We speak Greek. And it's a Christian manuscript produced by Christian scribes. It dates to the mid-300s and those are earliest large, whole, Bible manuscripts, date to the 300s. There are many manuscripts of individual books a day earlier, but of a whole thing together in Greek, the oldest one date to the mid-300s, and it's in this order. So that's interesting. The order, from our vantage point, that order, the earliest hard evidence for that order in an old Bible is 1700 years old,

which is pretty old. Yeah. It's pretty old. But the Old Testament's way older than that. Mm-hmm. It's not, and it's not, and it's not, it wasn't written in Greek. It wasn't written in Greek.

Yeah. And it wasn't a Christian document. Correct. It's a pre-Christian. So that's an interesting fact to it. So, layer on top of that, another said it interesting fact. When you look back at how Jesus himself referred to the Scriptures, for him would have been the Old Testament, he refers to it by its sections.

And when he does it, he doesn't talk about Pentateuch history, poetry, prophets. So it's a conclusion of a gospel of Luke in the resurrection stories, where he appears and has that awesome Bible study. Yeah. With the disciples in the room, and he has fish with them. This is Luke chapter chapter 24 verse 44.

He says, hey guys, listen, why are you surprised of everything that just happened over the weekend? Because that dead guy is alive. Yeah, yeah, I was totally. So that's why they're surprised. It's partly. But then he goes on to say, listen, you know, this is what the Hebrew scriptures have been pointing to

all along. And he says, this is what I told scriptures have been pointing to all along. And he says, this is what I told you when I was still with you, that everything must be fulfilled, that has written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Now you could just take that as he's just, he's just pulling out some of those highlights. Yeah, the highlights.

So, the Old Testament highlight real. Yeah, so the law of Moses, I guess, maybe he's talking about the laws of Mount Sinai. Yeah point to me The prophets of course sure, right? So there's a bunch of them and the Psalms So if you if you take those three state the three words law, prophets and Psalms in relation to your English Old Testament It'll he just kind of picking out some different points in no particular order. He left out the poetry books, the stories of Genesis, don't seem really counted for. You know, the Joshua judges, you know, the history books,

and you think, well, yeah, they're history. They're not about predictions of the future. I'm just, this is what kind of go through your mind. Right. What you have reference to is just the, Yeah, Jesus is just picking out the parts of the Old Testament that make you see his relevance.

That's how it was seen. Yeah, correct. So that's one way to read what Jesus is doing there. However, reading it that way is really taking what he's saying out of context. It's assuming that the order that we have in our English Bibles is the order arrangement the Bible that Jesus had. So which we know for a fact it wasn't. We know for a fact that it wasn't. Yeah. Well, we know is that the majority way that Jewish pre-Christian and even the earliest Christian, Jewish readers of the Hebrew Bible, the way they encountered the Bible, the way they thought about it, was not in four sections,

but actually in three sections of the Torah, the prophets and the writings. Torah, the prophets and the writings. And we have abundant evidence for this in Jewish writings and authors, contemporary with Jesus or before him. and authors contemporary with Jesus or before him. So for example, among the second temple writings that made it into the Catholic Deuteron canon, there's a book called The Wisdom of Benzira. And there's a prologue to it.

And Benzira, his name is Yeshua, Jesus. The main wisdom in the book is by an old sage named Yeshua, Benzira. But then his grandson wrote a little prologue at the beginning of the book is by an old sage named Yeshua Ben-Sira, but then his grandson wrote a little prologue at the beginning of the book. And he says, many great teachings have been given to us through the law, the prophets, and the other writings that follow them. So my grandfather, Yeshua devoted himself, especially to the reading of the law, the prophets, and those other books of our ancestors. So he's got a three part, when he thinks about the shape of our ancestors. So he's got three parts. When he thinks about the shape of the Hebrew Bible,

he's got the same three part shape that Jesus does, the law, the prophets, the other writings. But Jesus doesn't say the other writings, he says the Psalms. This is Psalms, we'll talk about that. There's one of the dead sea scrolls makes a reference to the whole of the Hebrew Bible and calls them the scrolls of Moses, the words of the prophet, and the words of David.

So again, we've got this law of Moses. So they've been referred to now so far as the other writings, the words of David. The third section? Yeah, the third section. Yeah, yeah, yep. The other writings, the words of David, and the Psalms. The Psalms. And just to cap it off, Fala, who was lived down in Egypt

who was a Jewish philosopher writing for a Greek audience. He was trying to get a hearing in the philosophical schools, Alexandria, Egypt, as a Jewish philosopher. He refers to his Bible quite a bit, and he refers to the shape of his Bible as the laws, the oracles given by inspiration through the prophets and the Psalms, along with the other books whereby knowledge and piety are increased.

So he's got Ford, Cateryzer? Well, the law, the oracles, given through the prophets, and the Psalms and the other books. Oh, as one thing. Yeah, Psalms and other books. Totally, yeah. So now for this third section, We've got the law and the prophets. That's pretty clear. It's become standard standard And then we've got for another collection alongside those two We've got Jesus as the Psalms. We've got the other books We've got David and we have the Psalms and the other books So there's no way to solve through that the Hebrew Bible has this three-part shape and that that third section is connected with David, namely the Psalms. That's the

only book in the writings. The writings, yeah. And then when we look at the shape of the Bible transmitted through the history of Judaism, it has exactly that three-part shape. It's referred to by an acronym called Tanakh. Tan-T-A-N-A-K Tanakh. And that's an acronym. It's an acronym. The T stands for Torah, which corresponds to the penitent first five books. But then interestingly, well, so the Torah. The Torah, which we've translated as a law, the law. Yes, that's right. Yeah, which yes, went into Greek and then into English as law. The Hebrew word refers in its most basic meaning as teaching or instruction. Which laws can teach and instruct you, but so can a poem and so can a story.

And that is a lot of the Torah, a lot of the first five books, are stories. Yeah, the majority of it's story. The next highest majority is legal material laws, and then the third, coming in third is a lot of, there's actually quite a lot of poetry. All of those teach just in different ways. So you've got the Torah, that's the T of the Tanakh. The N stands for the Hebrew word Neve aim, which is the Hebrew word prophet, the Torah, the Law and the Prophets. So in the English order, the prophets come last, but in Hebrew order, the prophets come after the Torah, and

look at what's in the prophets. The first four books of the prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and King. Yeah, those are history books. Yeah, so yeah, within our Christian English ordering, we think of those as history. In the Jewish tradition, because those books are considered books of the prophets. Because prophets, in my mind, were the poetry books of the prophets. Because prophets in my mind were the poetry books of the crazy guys that talked about crazy things.

But Joshua judges, those are stories about the history of Israel. Why do they consider those books the prophets? Yeah, so a few things. One is the conviction that comes down to Jewish tradition, that the whole of the Hebrew Bible is a prophetic work. So it's the result and work of the prophets. And so what these books are is,

it's Israel's history told from the point of view of the prophets. And secondly, that these books are actually about Israel's future. They are generating hope for the future by retelling the story of their past. So it wasn't just the telling of history just for the sake of telling history. For archival's sake. For archival's sake.

Yeah, actually at multiple points in the book of kings, the author says, hey listen, if you want like the whole complete record of what, Jerobah or all the different battles I did it. Yeah, go read, he callsahm or all the different battles. I did it. Yeah, go read. He calls it the annals of the kings. And he refers to those books constantly. So what that tells you is that, oh, the book of kings actually isn't primarily a historical chronicle.

He's drawn from historical chronicles to create a prophetic work, namely a work that looks at Israel's story from a divine point of view in order to generate wisdom, to teach wisdom to God's people and to sustain hope for the future. And that hope for the future is all about the coming kingdom of God and the Messianic King, especially in this reading order. So they're considered books of the prophets because the shape of the history and the purpose of the telling of the history is to give you hope for the future and to give you a perspective on why everything had happened in a particular way.

And that was a unique perspective that the prophets gave us. Yep. Yeah, the story arc of those four books, Joshua Judges Samuel Kings, is we went into the land under the, on the terms of the covenant that we made about Sinai and we blew it big time. Our best kings blew it big time and where they ran the whole ship into the ground

landed the people in exile and Babylon. But from there, there have been hints all the way along that that's where the story was going, and also that that wouldn't be the end of the story. That God was going to restore his people, bring them back from exile, and fulfill his purposes. And then what you get in the second part of the prophets are then what Christians typically call the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then the twelve minor prophets. And they're the big I told you so. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And they're structured as three and

twelve, three, the three big ones and twelve. And it's, which corresponds precisely to the story of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis. Three patriarchs. Three Abraham, Isaac Jacob, and 12. So once again, it's uniting the past and the future hope that God's promises to those patriarchs before Israel even blew it, is actually the only hope that there is for the future. And that's what the prophets go on to develop is they retell in poetry how Israel ran the ship into the ground. And that that's not the end of the story. They really develop the hope for God's kingdom, the day of the Lord, for the coming Messiah, and Israel returning to its land so that blessing

of Abraham can come to all of the nations. That's the prophet. So that's the law on the prophet. Yeah, he's the law on the prophet. And so when Jesus says the law on the prophets, he's referring to those two big blocks of the Hebrew Bible. And then when Jesus says the Psalms or when other Jewish authors say the other books, they're referring to a diverse third collection that begins with the Psalms. The Psalms is the first book of that collection. It's the K in the phrase Tanakh, which means ketovim.

That means Psalms. Ketovim means writings. Oh. Ritings. And then the ordering of the writings in ancient Jewish manuscripts tends to differ internally within, but it makes sense. There's no sequential narrative unifying them, but it does seem important and intentional that Psalms is at the beginning. And it also seems

intentional that in many Jewish orders, that the Chronicles is the final book of the Kettavim, which makes it the final book of the Hebrew Bible. So it's not Chronicles is not a book of the prophets? It's not among the prophets. Correct. Though it has the same purpose. So a couple things. First, we know Jesus referred to salt in Luke 24, the law of prophets and the Psalms, but also in a strange, unexpected way, he also refers to the ending of the Ketavim with chronicles. It's in a judgment oracle that he pronounces over Israel over Israel's leaders in Luke chapter 11, verse 51, he says, therefore, this generation, I hear the generation of Israel's leaders that's rejecting him, he says, this generation will be responsible for the blood of all the prophets that it's been shed from the beginning

of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. So it's interesting just for starters that he refers to Abel, Cain and Abel. Like on page four of the Bible, he refers to him as a prophet, which is its own interesting rabbit hole, to go down. But the point is he starts with Genesis, the first murder in the Bible is what he mentions.

And then he mentions the blood of Zechariah. Who is a prophet? Yeah, yeah, a prophet, and he's killed near the end of second chronicles, which if Jesus is working from the beginning to the end of Israel's history, Zechariah gets murdered in like the middle of Israel's history. But that's because he's not thinking chronologically, he's thinking literally, he's referring to the final section of the last book of the Hebrew Bible, which is Chronicles. So from the blood of the prophets, from the first book of the Bible to the last book of the Bible, that's what he's doing.

That's the point in that. So he refers to Psalms as the first book, the law of the prophets and the Psalms, and then this thing, he refers to Chronicles as the conclusion of the scriptures. Is the Ketsovim kind of like the junk drawer a little bit? Because there's not like a unifying as much of a unifying factor as the law. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Torah is all the books of Moses. Then you've got the prophetic books, it's history and the prophets.

Yeah. But then you've got like just this eclectic group. You've got Psalms, which is poetry, Job, poetry, Proverbs are Proverbs, ancient wisdom. Then, in here is Ruth, which is history. Yeah, a section from earlier in Israel's story. Yeah. Yeah. Song of Songs is like romance history. Yeah, a section from earlier in Israel's story. Yeah. Yeah. Song of Songs is like a romance poetry. Yeah, right. He, he, he asks these poetry. So we've got a lot of

poetry, mostly poetry and some, and some wisdom. Yeah. Okay, I can get down with that. And then like, rotations. Okay, more poetry. Yeah. But now we've got like more history and history and history. And then this, then this random book, which is like the Chronicles is all the history again. Yeah. Right. So, yes, that's at a first glance. It looks like the kitchen junk drawer, but remember, literary genius, nothing. There's no junk drawer. There's not one word in this whole thing that's unintentionally placed. So before we come back to what the Ketavim is and represents,

you gotta back up. And think about, so this is a collection of scrolls in the Hebrew Bible, they didn't have books. Yeah, it wasn't bound together. Yeah, so this is a collection of scrolls in the Hebrew Bible. They didn't have books. Yeah, it wasn't bound together. Yeah, so this is a collection of scrolls that is being viewed and viewed and referred to as a unified three-part hole in all these different authors, all these different sectors of Judaism, right? Jesus, Subangalli, Dead Sea Scrolls, they're out

former priests by the Dead Sea. You have a wisdom teacher in Jerusalem. You have all these different Jews, a Jewish philosopher down in Egypt, and they all have this sense of a three-part shape to the Bible, even though they've only ever encountered it in the form of individual scrolls. Yeah, that's good to think about. That's helpful for me, because they never had everything bound together. No. So they never had someone go, hey, let's put a table contest in there.

Yeah, the books, the books that we know of today is a, it's an invention of the Roman period. The codex. Post-Christian. Yeah, it's called the codex. So they had these really long scrolls. Yep. And they would roll up.

Have you ever seen the Dead Sea Scrolls, that's a great representative example. They're made of us animal skin, parchment leather, for the most part. These long leather animal skin scrolls. Yeah, scrolls. Would they be like stitched together or something? Yep, stitched. Okay. Yep, stitching.

And then they'd roll them up and one book would be on there? Or would a book be broken up? Any scrolls? It depends. Yeah, mostly it would be the individual books of the Hebrew Bible corresponded to a scroll. A single scroll. Yeah, you don't get all the books of the five books of the Torah on single scrolls until a later period. In Judaism. In Judaism. And you call it a Torah scroll.

Yeah. So, okay, so I'm imagining, as an ancient Jew, I, and I have access to a collection of scrolls, which would be not very many people, it would be like your synagogue. Yeah, not very many people. Your synagogue. And you've gotta put them in some sort of order, and traditionally, people are like,

okay, these five scrolls, this is a set, this is a collection, and that's the Torah. Yeah. And then these, how many are in the center? Section 17, you said? It's four plus 15. So you'd have this collection of 19 scrolls. Yeah.

And actually, sorry, the minor prophets were all, we're always connected on one scroll. Oh, okay. Oh, so it only be... Before scrolls for the prophets. Four scrolls. Oh, sorry, it would be Let's see Joshua judges Samuel Kings would each be one and then it would be four more Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the 12 eight scrolls

So yeah, so you'd have you have these five scrolls They have eight scrolls. You call the prophets. Yeah. And then you'd have a collection of other scrolls and you'd call them the Ketavim, the writings. And that tradition of how they are placed together, thought of together as a collection, was passed on to you. It's not like written in a table of contents or anything. Correct, yeah.

You just, that's how you think of this collection of schools. So, you know, all three sets you think of this collection of schools. Yes. So, you had all three sets together to you are your ancient scriptures. Yep. That's the idea. So, rabbit hole goes a little deeper. If you wanted to create some kind of system, some kind of intercross referencing linking system to help create sequence and order out of that, and you're working with the technology

of scrolls. Where are you most likely? Where's an editor who wants to bring coherence to this big collection, most likely to do their work? And it's fairly obvious if you work with scroll technology, because you open it up in either the beginning, or you've read it all the way through, and the outer leaf is the end. Oh, okay. So, if you look at the beginnings, and the first words and the last words of all the books of the Hebrew Bible,

you'll start to notice things that are really interesting. You'll start to notice what look like little editorial linking reference notices. If you look at the first lines of all the books of the Torah, they're all interlinked together. And if you look at the last lines of the books of the Torah, or in the last chapter of all the books of the Torah, you'll see that there are these little referencing mechanisms that either link back to the first line of the book, or that get you ready to read the next line of the opening scroll. Or would be an example of that.

Oh, so one, yeah, one example is the book of Exodus opens up with, these are the names of the sons of Jacob that went down into Israel, and it gives you a list. But you've read that list before. You just read it a couple chapters ago near the ending of the book of Genesis. So the beginning of Exodus actually picks up and condenses a whole section

out of the ending of Genesis and makes it the beginning of the story of Exodus. So it's a way of connecting the ending of Genesis in the beginning of the next scroll. So you're saying very likely the scroll of Exodus could have not had that. And someone with access to that scroll said, you know, I wanna make this really fit more

fluidly from Genesis to Exodus. So I'm gonna rewrite and paraphrase the ending of Genesis. And the only, and I'm gonna put it here to be in the scroll because I have some room. Yeah, totally. You can see this everywhere. All the books of the prophets begin with little's superscription headings that are all cross-referencing different moments in the book of Kings. Verbatim just lifted right, phrases right out of the book of King. So every book of the prophets in some way is being linked back. It's like hyperlinks.

You know, unlike a web page, it's like hyperlinking you back into the, the story of the prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samu Kings, you just read. So there's intelligent life here at work in this three part shape. So the books are all kind of linked together that way. But it's... So I guess to take a step back, because this is a new thought for me and for many people who grip the Bible

or become familiar with the Bible in some way, is that this collection of books, in my imagination, was always just handed down from God in this form. And yeah, through different people at different points in history, but it was like, here, here's the book of Exodus completed, here's the book of whatever minor prophet, it's completion. And then that was with fidelity, copied over and over and over and over, never changed.

Yeah. Because as soon as you start introducing this idea of, well, actually... Editors. There was an editor, and he put in a new introduction. That's just not a category of how the Bible was formed. Yeah. Alright, yeah, I was taught, let's talk about that for a second. So, two things.

One, there's nothing in the Bible that claims that these books were written all as complete first editions, as individual works, that were only brought together once they were each completed on their own. Like there's nothing in the Bible, it claims that. Second, there's nothing in the history of human writing that tells us that that's how books are actually produced. Even in the modern period. Yeah, but if it's going to be books or books, that God's going to give you because he wants you to know the truth about reality. You think he would do it that way.

Why? Why do you think he, why? Just be a lot cleaner according to him. I would think that. If, if I wanted a document. I am thinking about it. If I wanted a document that told me with accuracy and fidelity, what life was really about. And I wanted to know with absolute certainty that this came from God. Then it seems like if I was God, I would go,

okay, I'll give them something foolproof. I'm gonna give them something just completed, right off the bat, just here it is, and it's completion, there's no evolution of this, and it's gonna predict things in the future so specifically and accurately and completely. And then no one can ever argue and be like,

well, maybe Joe wrote this. No, how would Joe have written this? You know, like, then it becomes foolproof. And I feel like, as I'm saying that, it's obvious that's not what we have, but it's kind of what I think I expected to find. Interesting. And when we talk about all these prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, or all these prophecies that are going to be fulfilled,

that was always a proof of like, obviously this is divine, because look, who can predict the future? How is it possible that these 500 prophecies were fulfilled? Of course, it's a divine book. And so that's just kind of my category of this is what a book that came from God must look like. Yeah, man, it's really a big, big conversation. That mindset is a modern construct, modern construct, the modern Western construct, that's imposing onto the Bible standards of certainty and it's imposing on the Bible a view of

what Christians are called inspiration, term meaning how human authors were used by God to write these books. It's imposing a view of inspiration onto the Bible that you don't actually find in the Bible, because the Bible contains all kinds of records about the origins of its writings. Jeremiah 36, as one example, Jeremiah senses God calling him to collect all of his poems

and essays and prophecies over a period of 20 years, and put them together into a scroll. So he doesn't do it himself. He hires a professional scribe to do it. And how long did that take? I can't even imagine. I only have seven years worth of servants. And a lot of compiling all those together. So he does it. He, Baruch does it. The guy that describes the name is Baruch. And then he gives it to the kings and priests, and they burn it. The contents make them so angry. So then he senses God calling him to make another addition.

This is all in Jeremiah 3rd chapter 36. So they make a second addition. And the last line of the chapter is, so Baruch wrote down of the chapter is, so Baruch wrote down the words and put it all down, and then the last line is, and many similar words were added to them. So you're like, wait,

edition two, Jeremiah is longer than edition one. And what does that mean, similar words? Yeah, what does that mean? Exactly, yeah, exactly. There's like eight different interpretations of what that could mean Is a extra poetry of Jeremiah that he forgot to include in edition one is that Baruch's poetry is that Someone else's but that was related to the same themes and so you it also is Maddeningly ambiguous

but it at least tells us that this book went through multiple editions and a process of expansion through those editions. And you can see that in the book of Proverbs. You know, it says, Proverbs are Solomon at the beginning, but you finish the book and pay attention to the headings of different little collections. And you've also got in their sayings of the wise, you have the sayings of Solomon, the men of Hezekiah put in the book 200 years later after Solomon. And then the book concludes with the collection of riddles from a guy named Agua. We have no idea. It's not a Hebrew name. And then from

a king, a non-Israelite king named Lemuel, but it's actually wisdom that his mother taught him. We're told. So someone collected this all together. Don't clearly, someone long after Solomon, who we talked about this when we were talking about the Proverbs, and I was wrestling through the same thing, which is, that's not the clean version of divine scripture that I have is some guy going,

yes, you know, I'm gonna collect a bunch of really cool riddles and sayings. From Israelites, not Israelites, put them all together and I mean, it's not going down the strap of whole. Yeah, but here's who's at the root and I, this is important, I don't think we've talked about this before. Underneath that modern construct of a Bible like Golden Tablet's dropped out of heaven is a view of how God works in the world by His Spirit, namely that if God is at work in the world, it means that humans are not. Yeah, they're bypassed. Or if humans are involved, it's just incidental. Like their brains were

zapped, and they just were writing out these scrolls in a trance, not understanding anything. But underneath that is, yeah, it's this idea that if humans are at work, God is not at work. If God is at work, then humans either aren't involved or they're only incidentally involved. And that is completely foreign to the view of the spirit, the work of the spirit in the Bible. It makes things a lot messier. It makes it, yes, totally. It means God has chosen to work in human history through humans.

And it's the same issue with the Christian doctrine of the incarnation of that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Jesus didn't drop out of heaven speaking alien. He was born and he grew up speaking auremetic. But somehow we expect. We know what I've understood. Yeah, we expect the Bible to have dropped out of the sky, almost like independent of its origins. And we expect it to have been written and produced in a way that is unlike any other way that books were produced in that time period. And I just, again, I think we're imposing of strange and foreign set of assumptions on the Bible there.

Okay. Well, the rattles the brain. Yeah, it's a new paradigm that's based in actual historical evidence. And what makes it, I think, uncomfortable is that then the question becomes, well, if a biblical book can be edited, and that was divinely inspired editing. Yeah, that's part of how God, yeah. That's part of how God.

The end result is that God speaks to his people through these writings. Yeah. And these writings can have come about through all kinds of different ways. Then, you know, what, when is that complete? When is that process complete? Yes. Yes. And I feel like we've established, from our point of of view now we look back and we say this is complete

Right, don't don't mess with it. Yeah, the final edition. We've we finalized it. Yeah, yeah, and What so was that when's the final edition when was the final edition and was that final edition? Yeah like yeah Yeah, so establishing what the Like yeah, yeah, so establishing what the wording of the final edition is is the goal of a whole field of biblical scholarship called textual criticism and I fell in love with this field. I wrote my dissertation on a niche topic within this field because it involves ancient Hebrew manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Greek manuscripts, ancient Aramaic. It's so awesome.

The Bible's textual history is open public, opened to lots of historical, you know, investigation. There's no secrets here, and it's complex. It's not simple. But once you wade through all of it, we know the Bible's text history, and we can, with reasonable confidence, you know, say we have a firm grip on what the basic final edition was of the Bible But it takes it's taken a lot of work and what do we mean by final edition? Yeah, well it's complicated

It is complicated Because it's all about well what text manuscript witnesses do we have? We have some from the medieval period that have been really important. We have the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have ancient Greek translations. Because those were final at that time in history. Yeah, totally. So, and, and, and, add to all of this, I'm a follower of Jesus. Yeah. So, what I'm interested is, is the Tanakh, the Jesus Red. The only reason, me is a Scottish Gentile, you know, a poil and skateboarder on the other part of the planet

is once agreed that he revival 2000 years later, it's not because I just find it interesting, it's because I follow Jesus. And he said these books bear witness to him. So you're most interested in what was the Bible Jesus? I, as a Christian, I want to know and get in touch with the Bible Jesus read, which wasn't in English.

And it wasn't in Greek, though Greek is a very, no in Greek and the Greek translations is really important for uncovering the history of the Bible. But I want to read the Bible Jesus read as close as I can. Yeah, there's a line that Jesus says to some Jewish leaders that he's been arguing with in the Gospel of John. He says to them, you guys are experts in the scriptures. You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them, you have eternal life.

And then he says, these are the scriptures that bear witness to me. And there, and it's a very, in one verse, thank you have a nutshell of getting the horse first and then the cart. In Jesus' mind, the reason the scriptures are a divine word is not because you were being invited to a personal relationship with a book.

You're invited to have a personal living connection to Jesus, the risen Messiah. And the reason I read the Bible is because it's a divine and human word that points me to Jesus. It points forward from the Old Testament, and then for the New Testament it points me backward. And it all centers on the person of Jesus. It puts Jesus, the living Jesus,

who I don't know apart from the Bible, but at the same time, the Jesus that I know, the Jesus rendered represented for me in the pages of scripture, but at the same time, Jesus isn't the Bible. The Bible is a literary text that tells me and points me to an actual person who has a close connection to these texts, but isn't

the same thing. He's an actually just like, he's a person, just like I could read your biography, but I'm sitting across a table right now talking to you. And you were not the same thing as the book that could be written about you. But once I'm dead, that's all we're going to have. Well, yeah, you would need to be the son of God. A full biography. A full biography. A full biography. A full biography the son of God. A beautiful biography. Spirit could be present with us as I read the book and come in.

And that's the difference between me and Jesus. Yeah, that's the difference. That's right. So the focus on what it means that the scriptures are inspired or a divine and human word doesn't mean that they weren't produced through normal human processes. What it means is that the message that these books communicate is a message God wants his people to hear that points them to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And you're right. I've been living in this paradigm for a long time, but I went through a paradigm shift to get to the space. And every time I teach through the shape of the tonk, this is exactly the conversation. The conversation. Every time I've talked about the composition and unity of the tonk. It's like, wait a second. It raises this very question. You're shattering from categories I was holding. So that's how we got here. That's how we got here. The editorial unity of the Hebrew Bible. So to kind of finish off this conversation on Old Testament then, we Christians, Protestant

and Catholic call it the Old Testament. And in Hebrew, it was just the scriptures. The Bible, the scriptures. And also we refer to as the Tenak, because that's an acronym for the three parts. Correct. TNK. Tora, Neveim, Ketaveim. Neveim, Ketaveim. I remember in college, learning this for the first time, not really digging really into it, but kind of hearing, there's a different Hebrew ordering. And I didn't really understand it, but I knew of it it because I wasn't as geeky as you. And remember thinking to myself, was it important that I read the Hebrew ordering of the Old Testament?

Is there something more spiritual or more, you know, like, is that more biblical? Yeah, you know, yeah, it's interesting. I've had a hard time over the years trying to find a fair way to talk about this. The two orders, the English ordering, it may, there's a logic to it. You tell the basic story of Israel. You have the poetry in wisdom, Israel, and you have the prophets, like a ski jump

at the end of a steep hill. And the prophets launch you off into the future hope of the Messiah and the end of a steep hill, and the prophets launch you off into the future hope of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. Makes sense. The Tanak also launches you into the hope of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God, but in a different way. That hope is emphasized actually from the beginning, and then the prophets as a whole to have their own ski jump. And then the writings themselves are a whole ski jump. The three part shape, we haven't talked about this, but the three part editorial unity is itself designed at every step to pitch you forward

into future hope for the Messiah and then come in kingdom of God. And it's because the ordering of the books highlights those ski jumps in a way that the English ordering doesn't highlight. And it has to do with how the ending of Deuteronomy and the beginning of Joshua work together and those would be beginnings and ending of scrolls.

Which is the same in our tradition. It is the same in our, and if you pay attention, you'll notice something there. But what's going on there at the scholars call it the literary seam between the Torah and the prophets is directly connected to the literary seam between the prophets and the writings, the Nevi Mketsovim. If you go read the final paragraph of Deuteronomy and then go read the final paragraph of the prophets, which is Malachi. You'll notice electricity, editorial electricity connecting those two.

And then if you read the opening of the prophets, the first lines of the scroll, the prophets, and then the first line of the first scroll of the writings, the thumbs, you'll see editorial electricity. And all those passages are talking to each other. They are a part of the editorial unification of the whole Hebrew Bible, and all of these passages are about immersing yourself in these scriptures. As you're waiting the future coming day of the Lord, you're awaiting the future prophet who's going to bring the day of the Lord, and what's the day of the Lord on into the Psalms? It's all about the coming Messianic son of David who will bring the kingdom of God.

So the three-part shape of the Tanakh is pre-Christian and it's Messianic, it's future-pointing. And that's exactly why Jesus says what he says. Didn't I tell you, everything had to be fulfilled. Those written in the Torah, in the prophets, and in the Psalms. Jesus read his Bible as a big neon sign pointing to the future hope of the Messiah and the King of God, and that's what he came to fulfill. So I think reading the Bible in to not order is an important practice that Christians ought

to recover. And you can do this. You can go to your bookstore, well, most people don't have bookstores. Go to Amazon. Go to your Amazon. Go to your bookstore and go look for the Jewish publication societies,

version of the English translation of the Bible, and it'll be, it's called Tanakh. It's actually called Tanakh, T-A-N-A-K. You can get it through like 12 bucks on Amazon. Does Zondervin or anyone bind a whole test when you test it together in the other? Christian publishers that publish an English translation of not zero.

Zero. There are some modern Jewish translations of the old and new testaments, and they'll organize it that way, but they're very obscure publishers, or they're not mainstream at all. And I get it for the major publishers, there's no money. So wait, there's some... No money, and it's like... There's some niche publishers who might do it.

Yeah, let's hold on. Yeah, here we go. A messianic Jewish scholar named David Stern, who, through a small press called Lederer Messianic Publications, published a English version of the Tanakh and of the Barit Khadashah, which is Hebrew for a New Testament. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle for 12 bucks, a paperback for 30 bucks or 20 bucks used. It's called the complete Jewish Bible. What translation is he using? Mm.

In the complete Jewish Bible. Yeah. Mm. The complete Jewish Bible shows the word of God from Genesis Revelation and Unified Jewish Book meant for everyone. Do you and non-Jew like this text refers to the Bonded Leather Edition?

Ooh, ooh. Yeah, it's cool because he gives you the Hebrew names of Old Testament characters. Ooh. Ooh. Yeah, it's cool, because he gives you the Hebrew names of Old Testament characters. Okay. So that way, they don't get butchered as they do in most English translations. Like James in the New Testament is Jakob Jacob. So it is a different, it's just a completely different translation. Yeah, it might be his own translation.

I think it is. Yeah, his highly acclaimed English translation. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so yeah, it's his, there you go. For followers of Yeshua, this is a good translation that deserves its spot on your study shelf, along with your NIV and ASB. Yeah, it's awesome.

You won't read the Bible the same way. It'll really transform how you read the Bible. Alright, cool. So, um, next we'll talk about the New Testament. Yeah. Okay, so that's the tenac. And then, so let's just talk about the makeup of the New Testament really quick. Yeah. Yeah, so we're talking about 27 books that all emerged out of the events, you know,

ignited by Jesus of Nazareth, and they are all written by Israelites, Jews, who became disciples of Jesus, and then... During the Second Temple. During the Second Temple period, late Second Temple period. And then as the Jesus movement spread after his death and resurrection, they certain circle that Jesus appointed became figures called apostles. And then the books of the New Testament all stem from that circle of apostles. Most were written by apostles or some were commissioned by or

originated from even if they weren't written by the apostles themselves. So yeah, four counts of the life of Jesus connected to the apostles Peter Matthew, which one's Peter connected to? The Gospel of Mark, Matthew for Matthew. The Gospel of Luke, it's tricky. Many people associate it with the circle of Paul, because we know Luke was a coworker of Paul's, and then John. Then you get, after the four accounts of Jesus, you get the Book of Acts, which is also

from the same author as the Gospel according to Luke, which ends with Paul spreading the gospel all the way to Rome. Then you get a collection of Paul's 13 letters, addressed to seven churches. Total. Interesting. The first one being Rome. You finish acts, which has Paul in Rome, and then you turn the page and its Paul's letter to the church in Rome. Which is one of his old- Yes, letters. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's written in Latin as career. Oh, and so interesting fact, right, is these letters are ordered by their length.

They're ordered by their length, not by their date. Yep, that's why Fy Lehman's last. So that ordering. It's first. Yeah, and that ordering, hmm, there's actually, I have some homework to do on the ordering of the Pauline collection, collection of Pauline letters, but yeah, so that ordering obscures some interesting relationships, so it doesn't.

It makes you think that Romans is first, in fact, it's one of the latest, most mature expressions of his entire theology. But it's the longest, so it was perfect. It's the longest, yeah. As far as we can tell, first Cessalonians for complex reasons seems to be the earliest letter of Paul. So after Paul's letter, and also there's an important relationship, for example, between Colossians and Philemon. I think they're meant to be read back to back, as connected, because they refer to all the same.

But it goes to Ephesians Colossians. But yeah, instead it's... Yeah, Colossians. Yeah. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. But yeah, instead it's... Go ahead. Yeah, Colossians. Yeah. Ephesians, Philippians Colossians. Correct. Yes. So the Gospel is really quick.

So we're talking about ordering. Oh, yeah. What's the tradition of ordering the Gospel? Oh, yeah, boy. I have more homework to do there too. I know the ordering of Matthew as the first of the four is pretty old. And by old I mean maybe to the mid-100s

or so when our first evidence of the four being written collected together. But historically, the consensus position and New Testament scholarship that I think is right is that the Gospel of Mark is the oldest, the first, and that Matthew and Luke both drew upon Mark as one of their sources because they knew that it came from the testimony of Peter. And then John stands last in terms of the four to be written, but they're all written before the end of the first century. So they're ordered Matthew first? So they're ordered Matthew first. Oh yeah, so I hear my hunch and my hunch is more that like I've heard some other scholars say it and is Matthew is easily the most accessible and it's the version of Jesus' life that's

most designed to be taught in a local church community. And I learned this from experience because I did it. Yeah, that's right, you guys want to do that? Yeah, and actually part of the reason why I advocated for taking a year and a half of Sundays and the local church where I contribute to the teaching was Matthew designed this for to be the gospel that is taught for living community.

That's why he's gathered all of Jesus' teachings that are scattered in different places and Mark, but in Matthew's organized them all into five really nice blocks of Jesus' teaching. He's super methodical, how he stages the story forward. So Matthew is an excellent gospel to teach a whole church through if you wanna orient them to the complete story and teachings of Jesus. It's a lot gospel to teach a whole church through if you want to orient them to the complete story and teachings of Jesus.

It's more complete. Yeah, it's well by complete. I just mean Matthew's trying to give you a well-rounded, full-orbed presentation of Jesus in a methodical way in terms of how he's designed the story with story and then blocks of teaching, more narrative, more blocks of teaching. So we don't really know why they were ordered that way. There was not simple like, well, it goes in order of length, like the epistles. No, it's not in order of length. Yeah. So there may be some, I've got my Amazon wish list to big treatments on the formation of the four gospel canon.

But, and, and, and, because a lot of it has to do with our manuscript evidence. Because it is come here that Luke wouldn't come last to match. I know. Yeah, Luke obviously wrote two works that go together, but at some point, yeah, early church communities viewed, there was a greater value in seeing Luke

as part of this four-part collection of the Gospels as the two-part, then the two-part volume Luke X. Because it could have easily been Matthew Mark John. John. And then Luke X. Correct. Yeah. But that's not. Yeah, that's right. And because Matthew Mark and Luke have a unique relationship because they drew upon a common source material. relationship because they drew upon a common source material. We go together. They have been preserved as a triad. Got it. And then, okay, so, and then we get to Paul's letters.

We talked about those. Paul's letters. Then there's more letters after that. Then it's the, what do you do? The top 10 list of the Apostles. So it's Peter. And then John, Peter has two letters written to a circular letters to many different church communities. Then you have John's three letters, first, second,

third, John, first of which, the longest, first John is not even a letter at all. It's a sermon, or the Christian sermon. And then you get Jesus. Are those in order of length or date or anything? Oh, it's not self-evident what the order of writing was. Lots of different views on that. But they are in order of length. They are in order of length. Yeah, long, long medium short. Short.

Yeah, correct. Yep. You have the letter of James, Jesus' brother, although there's some people think that it's from James who was one of the twelve. Yes. Son of Zebedee, but the majority position that I think is more likely is that it's Jesus' brother. And then the next letter is then Jacob. No, that's James. Yeah, James. James also. More literally Jacob. Jacob. Yeah, sorry, his Hebrew name is Jacob. Jacob. Jacob. And then Jude is also Jesus' brother.

He wasn't one of the circles of the 12, but we know that Jesus' brothers became missionaries and church leaders after him. Paul mentions that in his first letter of the Corinthians. And we're not going to an order here. And then canonical order. And then we also have one anonymous early Christian sermon in the New Testament letter form, which is Hebrews, which traditionally for some amount of church history was associated with Paul. And even in some early manuscript was included

within the Paul's letter collection. Connotically it goes... Okay, so the order of the New Testament letters then goes from the letters of Paul, then to Hebrews, then to James. Yeah, anonymous letter. Two letters of Peter, three letters of John, one letter of Jude.

Okay, those are the epistles. Those are the letters of the New Testament. Yeah. And is there any reason why they were ordered that way that you know of? I mean, it makes sense for Paul, that Paul's correspondence that rose to the surface, the ones that were viral, that that would be collected. And then, you know, you have this hit list, James, Peter, John, Peter and John, two of

Jesus' closest disciples, and then you have James and Jude, two of his brothers. Mm-hmm. So you've got this pretty complete representation of the apostles and the leaders close to the apostles. Why do Hebrews write there in the mix? Yeah, Hebrews is self-aware as being a document that comes from a disciple of the apostles. In chapter two, or no, chapter one, he talks about, listen, we are those who have heard from those who heard the Lord. And so the author, the pastor, I call him, the pastor of Hebrews, is writing to a church community that he's scared, Jewish, Jewish, Messianic Jewish community,

that he's scared, is gonna abandon faith in Jesus. And so he leverages the teaching of the apostles, that's what he says in the sermon's opening. So yeah, we don't know. Yeah, Hebrews is really interesting, but again, so much, this is getting into the history of the canon for how these letters rose to the top was not through getting voted by councils. It was through the growth of the Jesus movement

and what letters and literature stemming from the apostles went viral and rose to the top. And Hebrews was among that list, even though it wasn't directly authored by an apostle, at least it doesn't claim that in the document itself, like Paul's letters do or Peters. in the document itself, like Paul's letters do or Peters, but it does claim to be passing on the teachings of the original apostles. And so it rose to the top. And it's powerful. He brews it's powerful. So any of them.

So then this all ends with then the revelation. Yeah, really. Jewish Christian apocalypse. A Jewish Christian apocalypse. Or a Christian Jew who wrote Christian apocalypse. A Jewish Christian apocalypse. Or a Christian Jew who wrote an apocalypse. And in apocalypse, we know what those are from other books in the Old Testament. Right. Yeah, there are parts of the books of the Prophet in the Hebrew Bible that communicate

through the Prophet having a fantastic dream or vision, and then he meets some kind of mediator, usually angelic type figure, who explains what the meaning of his dream or vision is. Ezekiel has one of those, Isaiah, Zechariah. And so in second temple Judaism, that media, let's think back to the analogy of the art project. Yeah. So that would be one of the ways that's got that might be spoken word. Yeah, the little spoken word. Yeah. So it's like, oh, this is one of the apocalyptic sections. Yeah. Of there's a dream revision, I guess, explain. Yeah. And so this is interpretive dance is probably explain. And so this is interpreted dance is probably

violent interpreted dance. So yeah, so then out of that in the amazingly productive literature of the Second Temple Jewish communities around Jerusalem, there were produced whole books that were apocalypsees. The most significant ones throughout history have been a book called First Enot, a book called Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch are the most significant ones. And they read very much like the New Testament book of Revelation. Prophet has a dream or a vision, fantastic symbols, and then they're interpreted, and made relevant to the community the author wants to write to. And so what we have, and yeah, the revelation is John, and whether that's the Apostle John, or whether it's a Jewish Christian prophet who traveled around the seven churches that he writes to,

but who's not in the Apostle. Oh, we don't know, but you're... There's strong arguments on either side, but yeah, he has... He had a series of dreams or visions and then composed all of them together into this incredibly profound and sophisticated literary work that he calls the Revelation of Jesus.

And so it comes, that also emerges out of the life of the early church, just like all the other letters do. But he's aware of himself speaking to the whole community of Jesus followers all over the world. And he's trying to help them trying to motivate them towards faithfulness in light of the coming persecution, he knows is on the horizon. It makes sense that this one's last because it talks very specifically about the end of the age. Yeah, Apocalypse is by nature, the prophet would have a dream revision, and it would give them scholars talk about

two dimensions that are opened up for the prophet. One's vertical, so usually there's a heavenly throne room. The prophet has a vision of God's throne, and so it gives them this heavenly vantage point on current events and history, but then it also gives them a horizontal viewpoint of able to view the present moment in light of the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises, which is the return of the Messiah, the Kingdom of God, heaven on earth, reunited, evil,

vanquished forever. And so Apocalypse's give a heavenly vantage point on history, viewing current events in light of history's final outcome in the Kingdom of God. It's fitting, obviously fitting that the revelation is the capstone of the Christian Bible because it's about how the story ends and therefore how to live in the present in light of the story's end. So there's a, yeah, there's a question that was John aware of himself as writing the final book of the Bible one. But I think in.

Let me finish this. That was your project. Yeah, but I mean, that's, technically it's called an inachronism because even the collection of all those 27 writings wasn't altogether in one place yet. They had all been, they all were in existence by then. And they were being read, but not everybody had all of Paul's letters yet. They had all been, they all were in existence by then. And they were being

read, but not everybody had all of Paul's letters yet. They were still getting circulated around. And so it took another period of time for these 27 works stemming from the circle of the apostles to become universally acknowledged and recognized as Holy Scripture. Which is a story for another time. Which is a story for another time. But that's the shape,com slash the Bible Project. It's also on our website, thebibeproject.com. Coming up next on the podcast is going to be a discussion on the Holy Spirit.

Tim and I had a lot of fun going through the theme of God's Spirit through the narrative arc of Scripture. And seeing how instrumental God's Holy Spirit is to the Christian life. So make sure to subscribe to this podcast if you haven't, so that you can get that episode when it comes out. And it'll also be our next theme video on our YouTube channel and on our website. Say hi to us on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, and if you like this podcast, please give it a review. It helps a lot in the exposure of this project.

Thanks so much for being a part of this with us. you