Meditations

Question on moody radio open line program on March 23, 2019 with Dr Michael Rydelnik, Dr Jim Coakley, Steven Sanchez.

How was the old testament canon recognized?

Michael Rydelnik:

I am going to jump in here. I had the authoritative expert in a course that I took in Seminary, he wrote the book “General introduction to the bible”, he wrote the book “From God to us”. His name is Norman Geisler. He’s quite a respected person. I think one of the things that he said about canon is especially important. We talk about all this different test of canonicity but the main thing that he said is that when books of the bible were written, the people of God immediately received them as the word of God. It wasn’t like we are going to test this one out to see if this is the word of God. It was immediately received as the word of God. That’s why I don’t think the books of the Hebrew bible were the literature of Israel, they were not. They were the literature of the remnant of Israel, books written to the faithful of Israel to give them the word of God and they immediately received it as such and then they passed it on and as the books were received, they were added to this collection of books and of course there was the guy that I think was most significant and Rabbinic writings says he’s significant as well, I think the bible says he’s significant and that’s Ezra. Ezra’s the guy, he’s the biblical author and he put it all together in the final form in what the Hebrew bible is supposed to be. I want to jump in with the passage that I think is pretty important for understanding this, it’s from Ezra chapter 7 verse 10, Ezra had determined in his heart to study the law of the Lord, the Torah, and then it says to obey it and to teach its statutes and ordinances of Israel. The interesting thing about the word obey there, it can mean to form it. I think he wanted to obey it but what he did was that he studied the Torah,  Torah was the word that refers to the law of Moses but it could be expansive to the whole Hebrew bible and he formed it, he put the final shape to everything and under the superintending of the Holy Spirit and then taught it to Israel. So that’s why I would conjecture that the close of the bible happens at that point.

Steven Sanchez:

I think it is important to remember that the people of Israel, speaking specifically of the Hebrew bible, they were already trained to listen to the voice of God. They knew this before they came into the land. There are going to be other voices speaking. God tells them, you might have a prophet that comes and tell you to worship another God and they ask, How will we know? He give them some test, their ears were already tuned as they were and so when a prophet shows up, he says things that are theologically accurate,  they welcomed that as the word of God. It’s not a committee sitting there saying I wonder should this be included or that one. They hear it , they know what it is and they keep it. The other things they put to the side.

Ezra 7

10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.  -nkjv