This is from the conference 'How We Got The Bible.'
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5815.0.html ---
But where did ALL these Bibles come from? Where did that German Bible come from? Most importantly, are these Bibles complete? Are Books missing? What about all these Lost Books? You know the Lost Book of Eden - The Book of Enoch - the Book of Jasher and all of these. Which Scriptures did Jesus and the Apostles use? Did the Catholic Church decide what is and what isn’t Canon? How can we know for sure? So we are going to answer these questions.
WHAT IS “CANONIZATION?”
There is nothing mysterious about how or what is meant by canonization. It merely means that a book or writing has to be recognized, approved, or officially used or read or marked or stamped by the highest servants of God, as genuine and inspired of God. Well who does that?
All the examples we have, it was always a very high official of God’s, either a priest - a governor - a king - a prophet. Generally no one less had the authority to say this is Scripture. Now it could be counted Scripture by merely the use of it. If it was used regularly, taught regularly, spoken or read regularly then it was considered Scripture. If it was made part of the ceremony at the Tabernacle and later on even more so at the Temple, like where David set up singers and so on. So then whatever they used was considered Scripture. So it could be by usage, it could be by declaration that someone just says, ‘this is Scripture’ or it could be that they put a stamp on it, like Hezekiah did.
Josiah made all the Scripture in the Square Block form of Hebrew. So any of the old Scripture, if they weren’t Square Block form then you could say, ‘I don’t know if Josiah approved that or not.’ So there are ways we can know what is scripture.
There are 7 periods of making some kind of gesture as to what is the Scripture. What are the Scriptures that are God’s Word, in which God put His approval on the Books that He desired to be collected and maintained as His divine Scriptures? We are going to see how they were passed on.
Now the good thing is we don’t have to go back to Moses and Elijah, Nehemiah, David and Solomon to have a good idea what constitutes Scripture. What authority can we go to, to jump forward a thousand years or so?
THE WITNESS OF OUR LORD
[The Most Credible Witness To The Canon]
Our Lord is, of course the most credible witness as to what should be Scripture and what should be in your Bible that there is.
Now, here we are going to learn some interesting things. The third Synoptic Gospel was written by the physician Luke. Luke was a Greek name, but there are some who contend he was a Jew. I think most scholars think he was a Gentile and there seems to be a good reason for how he wrote, if he was a Gentile.
He was one of Paul’s closest and dearest traveling companions. You can see this in Col. 4:14 and Philemon 1:24 and others. Luke wrote the Gospel according to Luke, and also the Book of Acts, which introduces the Gospel to the Gentiles - Acts 9:15; 10:45; 11:1; 13:47; 15:7; 21:19; 22:21; 26:23; 28:28.
Act 9:15 But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name to the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel:
First He mentions “to the Gentiles” and this is Luke, he wrote this. So Luke is letting the Gentiles know and if you have a red letter edition, that verse is in red, those are the words of our Lord and He said these Scriptures are to go to the Gentiles. Well now if we are going to send ‘the Scriptures’ to the Gentiles, we’ve got to know what ‘the Scriptures’ are, right? Does Luke inform us as to which of these Scriptures, are to be considered the Scriptures, the gospel and all these messages? In Luke 2 it’s a very interesting little story and Luke is the only one that carries it. My Bible heading says ‘Simeon’s Prophecy.’
Luke 2:25 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon…
v. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
v. 30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation
v. 31 Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
[Now notice what it says in verse 32]
v. 32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.
Notice that he mentions the gentiles first. This is a little reversal from what the Jews always did and what Paul always did. It was always to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. Here we have the Gentiles first and then the Jews In the book of Acts we just read, “to the Gentiles” and then to Israel also. Why should that be? Well maybe because we have a Gentile writing it. Maybe he understood already that God was going to leave off with Israel and go predominately to the Gentiles.
I mean Paul still at the end of his ministry, he’s still going to the Synagogue of the Jews, when he goes to a city. But in Palestine Jerusalem he shook the dirt off his feet and said, “I go now to the Gentiles.” (Acts 18:6).
But you see there are some things covered by Luke that aren’t in the other gospels and Luke wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote that book. Now let’s turn to something really interesting. So to go among the nations, we already read in Luke 2. Now let’s read this.
Luke 24:46-47 And He said to them, thus it is written, and so it behooved Christ (He is talking about Himself in the third person) to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
So where did Christ according to Luke... because the others don’t word it this way, but Christ did say this. It’s just that Luke was the only one that picked up on it, because he’s a Gentile and this means a lot to him. All nations, okay.
Now it says in verse 46 “thus it is written.” Where is it written? Where is this prophecy that He should go to the Gentiles, where is it written? There was no New Testament yet. Christ hadn’t called Paul yet, there wasn’t no Epistles of Paul. Christ was just resurrected from the dead that day or within so many days. But where is it written? Now we are talking about the Old Testament.
We read something else that the only place in the Bible that you will find it is back in verse 44. We are going to learn where it is written.
TRIPARTITE DIVISION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE LAW OF MOSES - THE PROPHETS - THE PSALMS
Luke 24:44 And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in THE LAW OF MOSES and in THE PROPHETS and in THE PSALMS about Me.
There it is. That is called the Tripartite Division of the Old Testament, the Law - the Prophets - the Psalms. The Psalms are also known as ‘the Writings.’ So Christ is telling us there is 3 divisions of Scripture that prophesy and talk about Him; the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.
This is the only New Testament Scripture that mentions this Tripartite Division of the Scripture. The Jews in Jersalem had the proper Scriptures, Rom. 3:2 "...unto them [the Jews] were committed [Gk.- 'put in trust and charge of'] the oracles [Old Testament Scripture - divine utterance, I Kings 6:16, Heb. 5:12, I Peter 4:11] of God." Paul is here confirming that the Jews in fact HAD carried out this commission of the Jews.
But why did Luke record this? Well certainly not for the Jews, they knew what the Scriptures were. The Jews didn’t need to be told what Books constitutes the Scriptures… but maybe the Gentiles did. All you had to do was go to the Temple or go to any Synagogue and you could see what the Scripture are. But these were not the Synagogues of the Gentiles. There were no Synagogues of the Gentiles, they had no Holy Scripture, Hebrew writings or the Law of Moses. So Luke is writing this for the benefit of Gentiles. That’s US! Us Martin Luther people. So we know what scripture we should be looking at, the Law - the prophets - the writings.
You could go into any Temple and say ‘Rabbi, I heard somebody out in the street talking about the Law and the Prophets and the Writings/Psalms, what is he talking about?’
‘Well he is talking about the Scriptures. You see all these scrolls, there is the scroll of Isaiah, see and I’ve got them all up there.’
‘Oh okay, so does everyone know about them?’
'Yes my son, everybody knows. Every Jewish boy for a thousand years knew that.’
‘Is this the only place they can find these, here in the Temple?’
‘Oh no, all the villages and towns that have a Synagogues, they all have them. Right next to Peter house in Capernaum, they have them up there too.’
‘Oh okay.’
You know I wanted to bring a vellum scroll, a sheep skin scroll. So I checked eBay to see if I could get one. Was I in for a shock. They wear out, so they buy new ones. Now all Synagogues have these vellum scrolls, well they might have paper, but the real orthodox, they had real vellum, you know the skins. So I checked eBay and the cheapest one I could find was $9000 and they only had 3 or 4. They went from 9 to 50,000 dollars. This is for modern scrolls. These might have been made back in the 50’s or 60’s, for $50,000.
So I said, well they’re not going to see those scrolls, I guess. I’ll bring my old Germany Bible, that’s an original.
So everybody knew what these were, except maybe the Gentiles. Luke is a Gentile, writing to the Gentiles and that’s 'us' people. Now we know whatever constitutes the Laws, the Prophets and the Writings to the ancient Jews, that’s the Old Testament. So by the time of Christ, the Old Testament had to be completed, right?
EZRA FINALIZED THE CANONIZATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT:
All other periods of canonization are of little important compared to that of Ezra who made the final decision on all books. Approximately 444 BC Ezra publicly reads The Law in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8 & 9), and Nehemiah is renamed Governor of Judah and began re-establishing proper worship (Nehemiah 5:14).
Ezra edited some books to make them more understandable. Example: Deut. 34:5-12 was added by Ezra (Moses did not record his own death). Ezra edited numerous books to bring them up to date. He wrote the book of Ezra, Book of Nehemiah was previously known as II Ezra, and he wrote I & II Chronicles. He wrote THE LAST BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT!
There was no new revelation for 450 years, from the time of Ezra back in about 444. So for 450 years that Book is finished, whatever The Laws and The Prophets are, it’s finished. So whatever they had in the Synagogues and in the Temple, those are ‘The Books.’ You don’t need the Catholic church to tell you which Books belong to the Old Testament. Trust me they did not have the Apocryphal in there.
Listen, in the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted by the different writers about 260 or so. Exact scripture are quoted from the Old Testament in the New Testament, Matt., Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and James, they all quoted from the Old Testament.
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mercy, peace and love
Kat
Author
Topic: All Scripture is Inspired (Read 11629 times)