Meditations

Question on moody radio on March 23, 2019 on openline:

How was the order of the New Testament determined that is in our English Bible?

Dr James Coakley:

That’s a very good question. Most of the time, people are surprised that it’s not by when they were written, it’s often by size. Romans start out as one of the largest of Paul’s letter and we get smaller and smaller as we go, so it’s not on a linear chronological timeline

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

First, you have the gospel, there’s some sort of chronology,  then you get Acts. When I teach Acts, I always tell everyone, here’s what I want you to do, I want you to read the first verses of Romans and see if you know what this means if you don’t have the book of Acts, it’s the great bridge from the gospels to the epistles. And then you get the letters, so you got the story of Jesus, the story of the church, the letters to the church and then the culmination with Revelation, so it’s size and chronology at the same time.

Dr James Coakley:

There’s a little bit of both but the idea is Galatians is probably one of the early ones, how come it’s not first that we read the book of Acts, it’s because they were smaller than Romans, Romans is a very key book.

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

So that’s how it was and I think that’s really important but I think there are other books that are the in-between books.

Question on openline moody radio on 23 March 2019:

How was the New Testament Canon recognized?

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

It was a little bit different (from how the old testament canon was recognized), don’t you think?

Dr Steven Sanchez:

In some ways it’s different, in other ways it’s the same, I think christians hear the voice of God, they know these texts, they recognized the people who are writing them, Peter is going to refer to Paul’s writings and he’s going to refer to them as scriptures, he recognized  in them the same voice of God and so in that sense, the process is not that much different, they hear God speaking in these texts and they trust them.

Dr Jim Coakley:

Even in the first century, we have Clement of Rome who was already quoting from some of these books, already eight of the books were already mentioned by 95 AD, so they were clearly being already seen as authoritative very early on.

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

It is interesting because even the New Testament is accepting it right away. Here’s what I mean by that, Jude cites Peter, Peter cites Paul as scripture and if you want to see that, that’s in 2 Peter 3:15 and 16, he even says Paul’s hard to understand.

Dr Steven Sanchesz:

Like the other scriptures …

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

Yeah and so he sets them as scripture, Paul quotes Luke as scripture, 1 Timothy 5:18, he quotes Luke 10:7, obviously he knew about Luke’s writing but he quotes it as scripture and so the New Testament is actually quoting other New Testament books and so it shows us these books were immediately being recognized as scripture and many times, the letters Paul wrote and Peter wrote and James wrote, they weren’t just written to one …

Dr Jim Coakley:

They were cyclical letters, they were being passed around …

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

Yeah. Why? Because they were considered the word of God and it was important that we recognized that it was not Constantine. Trish can confirm this, we got a lot of questions asking if Constantine decided on what books would be in the New Testament.

Related Scripture:

2 Peter 3

¹⁵ and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, ¹⁶ as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.  -nkjv

1 Timothy 5

¹⁸ For the Scripture Says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”  -nkjv

Luke 10

⁷ And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house.  -nkjv

Moody Radio openline on March 23, 2019:

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

We are talking about the old testament canon and I raised the issue of Yavneh, which is where Judaism reformed itself after the destruction of the temple, in the greek term it’s called Jamnia. Now, they have a role in determining the old testament canon, what was it?

Steven Sanchez:

Now, let’s say that it wasn’t. It wasn’t oh we got a lot of books laying around here, let’s pick a few and make a canon for ourselves.

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

Because there was already a canon …

Steven Sanchez:

They already knew what the canon was, so they are reaffirming, they are acknowledging, there are some questions at the margins, about the books that are difficult to interpret but that’s vastly different from saying let’s make a canon for ourselves and sanctify it as authoritative,

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

They already accepted the canon, we see it in the new testament,  Jesus already accepted the canon but they say well what about the song of Solomon, seems a little too sensual …

Dr Jim Coakley:

There was an ongoing discussion to see what are we going to do with this books, as Steve says, that are at the margin,  like …

Steve Sanchez:

Proverbs,  Ezekiel, Ester …

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

They think Proverbs could be illogical, why? Because one verse says answer a fool, another says don’t answer a fool instead of understanding it as wisdom,  so they are talking about that, they are talking is Ester a non spiritual book because God’s name is not mentioned,  they are talking about Ecclesiastes, it’s kind of skeptical in places,

Dr Jim Coakley:

So they are using his words as authoritative when it’s Solomon musing about life,

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

But the most influential Rabbi there, Rabbi Akiva, he kept insisting that yes these are words of God, he wasn’t saying we should include them, he was saying let’s not get rid of them, they are in the canon already.

Steven Sanchez:

That’s important. They all already know what’s in between the covers of the book.

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

I always think it’s important that we know when it comes to canon, what they are really doing is these new books were showing up, remember this is the years between 70 and 120 AD, new books are showing up, they are called the new testament, they actually allude to them, these Rabbis at Yavneh, they don’t like it. So they say these, not those, they don’t accept their authority because they are excluding the new testament from the canon. Their job is not to decide what the Hebrew canon is, what they want to is to exclude the new testament canon.

Moody Radio openline program  on March 23, 2019:

Tricia Mcmillan with the question:

Can you define canon? That’s kind of what we are going to talk about. What is the canon?

Dr Steven Sanchez:

We are not talking about weaponry here. We are talking about a word that means a measuring rod, some sort. The word’s suggestion is a stick, an instrument that is used to measure things and now by extension, by metaphor, that becomes a way of describing either the books that measure up to a certain standard or the books that become the measuring standard by which we measure other things.

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

People use the word canon, talking about the canon of scriptures, the books that should be in the bible. The way people use it, they should understand it because I hear students talk about the canon of Star Wars …

Dr Steven Sanchez:

Or the canon of Western literature ..

Dr Michael Rydelnik:

We are talking which are the key books people should read in western literature or we are talking about the canon of the Star Wars movies, or when we are talking books of the bible, we are saying these are those that are the Word of God. This is the inspired scripture. We are talking about the old testament canon and we are talking about the new testament canon. Which books were included in the bible, that’s what we are talking when we are talking canon.