WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:44.160 And I'm still Wo. 00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.080 Today's Stone Choir is episode one hundred. 00:00:48.080 --> 00:00:52.720 This in many ways will be the culmination of everything that we've 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:54.400 been doing for the last couple of years. 00:00:55.440 --> 00:01:00.800 This is the first of a four, probably five-part series on the 00:01:00.800 --> 00:01:05.120 Septuagint. And if you happen to have been sent this episode is 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:07.760 the first one you should listen to, I'm gonna ask you to 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:10.800 stop right here and go back and listen to the previous episode. 00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:14.240 Number ninety-nine that we did called the context window. 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:17.680 The episode that we recorded a couple weeks ago at episode ninety-nine 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:24.320 is effectively my introduction to this episode, wherein we lay out some 00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:27.440 of the premises for the approach that we're going to take as 00:01:27.440 --> 00:01:28.800 we make this argument. 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:32.720 And And while the content of that episode is not Septuagint specific, 00:01:32.720 --> 00:01:36.480 yet is very much specific to how we think, how we process 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.880 things. And basically the point I make in that episode that Corey 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:42.320 and I make is that we're going to cover so much ground 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:47.120 here over the next few episodes as we explain what the Septuagint 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:50.800 is and is not, what scripture is and is not, and what 00:01:50.800 --> 00:01:53.760 we as a church have been doing versus what we should have 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:54.640 been doing. 00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:57.120 There's There's going to be so much ground that we cover that 00:01:57.120 --> 00:01:59.200 no one can possibly keep it all in your head. 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.120 And that's not because anybody's stupid. 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:02.320 I can't keep it all in my head. 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:04.000 We've been working on this for sixteen months. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.520 I've probably spent close to a thousand hours, at least eight hundred 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:12.160 hours of study and preparation and Just getting ready to be able 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:13.760 to explain this stuff. 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:17.120 I don't say that to impress anyone, it's just that what we're 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:19.680 going to present is a tiny condensed version of the amount of 00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:21.920 stuff that there is to say about these things. 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:24.880 And so it's perfectly fine that you're not going to be able 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:28.800 to keep it all straight as we're delivering it to you orally. 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:32.160 The purpose of the last episode 99, what I'm going to reiterate 00:02:32.160 --> 00:02:35.120 here, is is one of the crucial things that you need to 00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:38.880 do as you're listening to this and the subsequent episodes on the 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:44.560 Septuagint. As we're going along, as you're listening, every time you hear 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:49.120 us say something that makes you mad or confused because you heard 00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:52.800 something somewhere else, and we can't possibly be right because some other 00:02:52.800 --> 00:02:54.080 guy said something. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:55.280 That's fine. 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:56.480 Please pause. 00:02:56.640 --> 00:02:58.480 I do sincerely mean this. 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:02.720 Pause playback, get out a pen and paper or fire up notes 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:05.520 or whatever on your computer, and jot down a note to yourself 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:07.760 to remember exactly what bothers you. 00:03:07.760 --> 00:03:10.960 Whatever it is that we're not accounting for, whatever it is that 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:14.160 we've just said that contradicts what you know to be absolutely true, 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:17.440 write it down, and then to the best of your ability, put 00:03:17.440 --> 00:03:18.800 it out of your mind. 00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:21.680 I say both of these things in parallel because we don't want 00:03:21.680 --> 00:03:22.560 to brainwash you. 00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:26.480 We're not trying to trick anybody, but if you get wound up 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:30.320 10 minutes into the episode because you were positive that we have 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:33.600 to be wrong because of something that you heard some guy say 00:03:33.600 --> 00:03:36.240 once, or something that you studied a lot. 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:37.920 And so we have to be wrong. 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:38.880 Okay, that's fine. 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:40.480 We can be wrong later. 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:44.000 Write down the reasons that we're wrong and then let us make 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:45.440 the rest of the argument. 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:46.560 That's the only plea. 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:48.480 Not for anyone to just believe what we say. 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:50.400 I don't want you to believe what we say as we always 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:51.200 tell people. 00:03:51.200 --> 00:03:54.560 If you believe anything, is don't just automatically believe what some idiot 00:03:54.560 --> 00:03:56.080 podcaster tells you. 00:03:56.080 --> 00:03:57.760 This stuff is history. 00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:02.240 The structure of these four episodes are going to be the first 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:06.080 one is going to cover essentially from the time of Abraham. 00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:10.000 We'll see how far we get into the post-temple history. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:12.480 Probably do at least the first century. 00:04:12.480 --> 00:04:14.880 We may get all the way through the creation of the Masoretic 00:04:14.880 --> 00:04:16.160 text itself. 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:18.560 We'll split that up for time as things go. 00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:21.600 The second historical episode that we're going to be doing of the 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:25.040 four is going to cover essentially wherever we stop in this one, 00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:28.880 probably somewhere around the creation of the Masoretic text, up through today. 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:31.920 But most of it is going to be focused on the years 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:35.760 from one thousand to fifteen, sixteen hundred AD. 00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:38.080 'Cause that's the history that we think of when we're thinking about 00:04:38.080 --> 00:04:38.800 the church. 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:42.400 Whether you're Roman Catholic or you're some flavor a Protestant, or you're 00:04:42.400 --> 00:04:45.120 Lutheran, you say you're not a Protestant, or you're some magical third 00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:48.720 thing. Or you're Eastern Orthodox, if you're still listening. 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:52.720 All of us have vested interests coming out of the second millennium. 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:55.840 All these decisions that have been made, and we have books written 00:04:55.840 --> 00:04:59.840 down by men that we revere and that we've trusted, we're going 00:04:59.840 --> 00:05:03.040 to say some things that make it necessary to conclude that somewhere 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:06.160 along the way, all those guys made one or more mistakes. 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:08.000 And so you're going to get mad when we say something. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:10.160 I don't care who you are, you're going to get mad at 00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:11.120 something we say. 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:13.920 Good. Write it down and then just to the best of your 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:16.160 ability, put it out of your mind so that we can make 00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:17.520 the rest of the argument. 00:05:17.520 --> 00:05:20.480 And then once we're done making the argument, I want you to 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:23.440 go back to your notes and see hopefully and one of two 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:26.880 things will have happened in most cases for whatever you wrote down. 00:05:26.880 --> 00:05:31.600 Either we'll have addressed your concerns directly by demonstrating what the error 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:35.120 was where the confusion was, or we will have demonstrated the the 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:38.080 thing that you were objecting to turns out not to even be 00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:40.800 relevant. In a lot of cases that's probably going to be the 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:41.840 case as well. 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:44.320 And then there'll be some things that you just flat out think 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:45.840 were wrong or tart or whatever. 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:46.720 That's fine. 00:05:46.720 --> 00:05:48.720 You'll have your notes, you're not going to freeze. 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:52.480 We're gonna be going for uh probably at least twelve hours over 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:53.680 the next few episodes. 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:55.920 So you can't possibly fit that all in your mind. 00:05:55.920 --> 00:05:58.560 Please take notes when you get mad so that you don't have 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:01.920 to stay mad to to hang on to whatever you objection you 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:04.560 have. It's always really easy to cling to your point when you're 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:06.080 fired up about it. 00:06:06.080 --> 00:06:09.280 Get fired up momentarily and then write it down, set it aside, 00:06:09.280 --> 00:06:10.400 and let us cook. 00:06:10.400 --> 00:06:11.200 And then we're done. 00:06:11.200 --> 00:06:13.440 If it's garbage, you don't have to you can just send the 00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:13.920 plate back. 00:06:13.920 --> 00:06:14.880 That's fine. 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.560 But if you get mad five minutes in, you're not going to 00:06:18.560 --> 00:06:20.640 hear anything we say, and it's going to be a waste of 00:06:20.640 --> 00:06:21.040 our time. 00:06:21.040 --> 00:06:23.760 And more importantly, to you, a waste of your time to have 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:28.880 listened. The very simple, essential point that we're going to be laying 00:06:28.880 --> 00:06:32.080 out over these four episodes is this. 00:06:32.080 --> 00:06:37.760 The Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament, is the scripture of 00:06:37.760 --> 00:06:42.160 Jesus, it is the scripture of the apostles, it is the scripture 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:43.680 of the early church. 00:06:43.680 --> 00:06:47.200 This is trivially demonstrable from history. 00:06:47.200 --> 00:06:50.880 It's not what most of us have been taught because we have 00:06:50.880 --> 00:06:56.480 been raised in the effectively the 21st century mode of thought where 00:06:56.480 --> 00:06:59.600 everything has to come from and through the Jews. 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:02.320 And so a lot of what we're going to be talking about 00:07:02.320 --> 00:07:06.240 is going to be withdrawing what we think we know about Christianity 00:07:06.880 --> 00:07:09.280 away from that frame. 00:07:09.280 --> 00:07:11.280 The first two episodes will be historical. 00:07:11.280 --> 00:07:15.200 The second two episodes, the third is going to be entirely about 00:07:15.200 --> 00:07:20.480 the Old Testament itself, showing the places where the Septuagint and what 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:26.480 is typically called the Masoretic text, it's effectively the only Hebrew source 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:27.440 that we have today. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.640 there's basically a single copy that's used as the basis for virtually 00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:33.520 every Bible. 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:34.960 It's a thousand years old. 00:07:34.960 --> 00:07:37.200 That's one thousand, not three thousand. 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:41.120 So we're going to devote an entire episode just contrasting what is 00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:45.280 in the third and fourth century copies of the Greek Old Testament 00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:48.960 with the 10th century Hebrew Old Testament. 00:07:48.960 --> 00:07:51.040 We'll show all the examples, or not all. 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:54.000 As we learn through this, it's not like there's just three or 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:57.520 four proof texts that are Christological on nature where, yeah, something was 00:07:57.520 --> 00:07:59.120 changed. Maybe it was a little bit better. 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:02.560 and even in the cases where virtually every Bible you've ever looked 00:08:02.560 --> 00:08:05.760 at is going to have been based on the Masoretic text on 00:08:05.760 --> 00:08:10.080 the Hebrew, they will still prefer the Septuagint rendering, which is to 00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:13.200 say they'll ignore what the Hebrew says and they'll use the Septuagint 00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:16.000 renderings in English because it's Christian. 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:18.160 And the only way to make the Old Testament Christian in a 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:20.880 couple places is to ignore what's in the Hebrew Bible. 00:08:20.880 --> 00:08:24.160 That's in your Bibles today, and we'll show some of those examples. 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:27.520 And then the fourth episode is going to be entirely about the 00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:32.480 New Testament, where we will demonstrate that virtually every quotation of the 00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:36.480 Old Testament of what Jesus and the apostles call scripture, what they 00:08:36.480 --> 00:08:40.000 call breathed out by God, is the Septuagint. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:43.920 Either it's in no way, shape, or form different than the Hebrew, 00:08:43.920 --> 00:08:49.520 or it is exclusively derived from the Greek Septuagint text and cannot 00:08:49.520 --> 00:08:51.920 possibly be a direct quotation of the Hebrew. 00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:56.400 And so in that fourth episode, we'll demonstrate clearly that our thesis 00:08:56.400 --> 00:08:58.000 statement is undeniably true. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:00.640 The Septuagint was the only Bible they had. 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:02.560 They hadn't written the New Testament yet. 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:06.080 So whenever they talked about Scripture, they were exclusively talking about the 00:09:06.080 --> 00:09:07.600 Greek Old Testament. 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:10.480 And so the basic point of all of this, all this time 00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:13.680 we're going to spend is that if the Septuagint was the Bible 00:09:13.680 --> 00:09:16.640 of Jesus and the Apostles and the early church, it must be 00:09:16.640 --> 00:09:19.120 the Bible of every Christian in every time and place. 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:21.360 So we're going to go through the history to explain why we 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:22.320 lost track of that. 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:24.000 How did that cease to be? 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.120 Because it's undeniably true that that's not the case anymore. 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:28.800 Very few people believe that. 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:31.840 And most people are already angry that we're even saying that because 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:32.480 that's crazy. 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:35.280 That's you know, Luther said this and Galvin said that and Pope 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:36.960 whatever said the other thing. 00:09:36.960 --> 00:09:38.240 That can't be true. 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:40.800 So we're gonna lay out in this episode and the next one 00:09:40.880 --> 00:09:43.280 the history of how we got here. 00:09:43.280 --> 00:09:48.720 Because if you don't understand the history of the story of the 00:09:48.720 --> 00:09:53.520 creation of the Septuagint in a context where Hebrew had been exterminated 00:09:53.520 --> 00:09:59.120 by God, and then the abandonment of the Greek Septuagint by the 00:09:59.120 --> 00:10:03.520 church over the course of many centuries, you want to understand what 00:10:03.520 --> 00:10:07.760 happened in the second millennium when the Reformation era and the churches 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:11.680 leading up to that, effectively Rome and the East, what were they 00:10:11.680 --> 00:10:14.960 doing that led to the point that when the Reformation came about, 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:18.880 they just completely rejected the Septuagint and said, okay, we're Hebrew only 00:10:18.880 --> 00:10:19.840 from here on out. 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:23.120 That That was a radical change during the Reformation. 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:25.680 And we're going to tackle that head on because that's going to 00:10:25.680 --> 00:10:26.640 anger everybody. 00:10:26.640 --> 00:10:28.640 So we have to deal with that pretty much in its own 00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:32.800 episode. The last point that I want to make that's crucial as 00:10:32.800 --> 00:10:34.320 you are listening to this. 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:38.960 God has miraculously preserved his word throughout all time. 00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:42.000 This is true regardless of what Bible you have in your house. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:45.600 There's some Bible translations that are so bad they would make me 00:10:45.600 --> 00:10:47.760 weep, like they shouldn't exist. 00:10:47.760 --> 00:10:50.880 And yet, if that's the only Bible that you have in your 00:10:50.880 --> 00:10:55.200 house and it's for everyone you have access to, God will work 00:10:55.280 --> 00:11:00.560 through that even in its befuddled state to create and preserve faith. 00:11:00.560 --> 00:11:04.320 This is the miraculous nature of God's word. 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:07.520 God's word itself is efficacious. 00:11:07.520 --> 00:11:12.000 We've said in the past, particularly in the Reformation episode, we have 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:14.320 a very remarkably ecumenical audience. 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:17.760 We have Roman Catholics, all manner of Protestants, even a few Eastern 00:11:17.760 --> 00:11:19.600 Orthodox still sticking around. 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:23.440 The one thing that all of our listeners have in common, despite 00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:29.200 all the historical deviations and in some cases radical doctrinal differences. 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:32.560 The one thing anyone listening who's not a hate listener agrees with 00:11:32.800 --> 00:11:38.400 is that scripture is breathed out by God and Scripture judges whose 00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:41.440 doctrine is true and whose whose doctrine is false. 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:46.320 And so when we have disagreements about doctrine, at least in principle, 00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:48.240 it's not going to be on the basis of I don't care 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:50.240 what God says, I'm gonna do what I want. 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:52.880 Even if, you know, when we're arguing, we would say, well, that's 00:11:52.800 --> 00:11:54.320 effectively what you're doing. 00:11:54.640 --> 00:11:57.920 Most one of us is right about those doctrinal quibbles. 00:11:58.240 --> 00:12:01.760 One of the things I want to make clear about this Septuagint 00:12:01.760 --> 00:12:05.520 episode, everything that we're saying here would be true and necessary, even 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:07.680 if the Greek and the Hebrew were identical. 00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:12.160 If the only thing that had happened was a perfect word-for-word translation 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:15.280 from one language to another, that would be sufficient. 00:12:15.280 --> 00:12:18.240 We would still be bound by God to use the Greek because 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:21.120 it's what Jesus and the apostles received and it's what the early 00:12:21.120 --> 00:12:22.240 church accepted. 00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:23.360 That's not the case. 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:25.280 It's in fact much worse than that. 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:28.480 But we're not looking at this from the perspective of picking and 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:32.640 choosing which text we prefer That's a danger that we all have. 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:35.680 And in just a minute, we're going to define what a translation 00:12:35.680 --> 00:12:39.520 is and is not for the purposes of this argument. 00:12:39.520 --> 00:12:39.840 But 00:12:40.800 --> 00:12:44.320 we are not saying, oh, well, I like this Greek version better, 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:46.320 so I think that's a better Bible. 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:51.120 Our argument for the Greek is explicitly and strictly limited to the 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:52.320 historical context. 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:55.760 And the New Testament itself attests to what we are saying. 00:12:55.760 --> 00:12:59.360 The New Testament attests and proves that the Septuagint is the Bible 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:00.960 of Jesus and the Apostles. 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:04.880 And history proves that the early church never thought otherwise. 00:13:04.880 --> 00:13:08.240 Until the fourth century, the late fourth century, it was never even 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:10.720 a question that anyone would look anywhere else. 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:13.520 So that's going to be a big part of the historical revelation 00:13:13.520 --> 00:13:17.040 today. That's not a revelation in the sense that it's new information. 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:19.440 It's just it's things most people haven't heard. 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:22.800 But it's all history when we are giving our opinions about stuff, 00:13:22.800 --> 00:13:24.560 it's gonna be very clear it's our opinion. 00:13:24.560 --> 00:13:28.080 We're dealing almost exclusively in facts here. 00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:31.200 But your Bible is not going to meet some of the tests 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:32.320 that we're laying out. 00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:33.280 That's okay. 00:13:33.280 --> 00:13:36.480 I don't have any Septuagint based Bibles in my house. 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:38.480 I'm not the least bit worried about it. 00:13:38.480 --> 00:13:41.360 When I read the Bible, including when I read the Old Testament, 00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:43.200 if I'm just reading, I'll just read. 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:47.760 Lately I tend to read the Septuagint more online, mostly out of 00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:50.640 curiosity to see if I'm gonna pick up on differences, but also 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:52.240 it's just God's word. 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:53.920 As I said, and I want to reiterate this. 00:13:53.920 --> 00:13:56.160 I don't want anyone to get angry at their Bibles and say 00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:59.360 my Bible's crap because it's not the Septuagint. 00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.160 God willing, in a few years we're going to have a new 00:14:02.160 --> 00:14:06.640 translation. By we, I mean the church, I mean Christianity at large. 00:14:06.640 --> 00:14:09.680 There's nothing be a stone choir translation of anything. 00:14:09.680 --> 00:14:11.360 In part because so many people hate us. 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:14.720 It'd be completely tainted and everyone would think we're trying to create 00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:15.920 some form of cult. 00:14:15.920 --> 00:14:20.480 That's something that James White and some others are very adamantly pushing 00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:22.080 now to defame us. 00:14:22.080 --> 00:14:25.040 So for that reason, even though there wouldn't be anything wrong with 00:14:25.040 --> 00:14:27.360 us being involved, we would not. 00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:30.000 I think if we do a fifth episode of this, it's going 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:33.440 to specifically lay out what we think the rules need to be 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:36.800 for a faithful Greek only translation of scripture. 00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:38.720 Because it's clear that we need a new one. 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:42.000 If for no other reason, incidentally, than one of the earliest episodes 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.880 that we did on paywalling God, we made the point that a 00:14:44.880 --> 00:14:47.920 copyright encumbered Bible is wicked per se. 00:14:47.920 --> 00:14:50.960 You cannot paywall God and say, you have to give me money 00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:54.800 before I'll give you God's word in a language you can speak. 00:14:54.800 --> 00:14:57.200 Translations today are just that. 00:14:57.200 --> 00:15:00.480 It's translated in the vernacular so that you can understand it. 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:05.680 So we simply need a new proper normal English, I don't say 00:15:05.680 --> 00:15:08.640 modern because that's such a tainted word, but a book that is 00:15:08.640 --> 00:15:13.280 free from anachronisms and strange words that no one knows, something you 00:15:13.280 --> 00:15:17.120 can hand to any fluent English reader, and they can read it 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:21.120 just without any help, without any oral tradition whatsoever. 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:23.600 It's gonna be a big part of this story. 00:15:23.600 --> 00:15:25.200 That doesn't exist today. 00:15:25.200 --> 00:15:28.880 The out of copyright Bibles, all of them have some issues, even 00:15:28.880 --> 00:15:31.680 apart from the fact that they're not based on the Septuagint, with 00:15:31.760 --> 00:15:34.240 the exception of Brenton's that has his archaic language. 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:38.480 Brenton's is basically the King James except based on the Septuagint mostly. 00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:41.120 So there are no good Septuagint options either. 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:43.200 There's nothing be a link in the show notes to say, well, 00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:45.520 here's the exact Bible you need to buy and it's gonna solve 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:46.720 all these problems. 00:15:46.720 --> 00:15:48.960 The Bible that we would say yes, this is one we would 00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:51.360 recommend anyone doesn't exist yet. 00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:55.040 In the second episode of listener feedback that we did some time 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:57.840 ago now, we spent the first hour talking about our approach to 00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:00.320 what Bible should I read? 00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:04.240 And none of that advice has changed, except that we'll be saying, 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:06.160 you know, hopefully in a few years there's going to be a 00:16:06.160 --> 00:16:11.840 Septeruit-based Bible with both the Old and New Testaments retranslated from all 00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:16.560 the Greek, that will not have the problems that exist in many 00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:18.160 of the modern translations. 00:16:18.160 --> 00:16:20.320 But that's not going to be a stone choir project. 00:16:20.320 --> 00:16:22.160 Someone also have to take that on. 00:16:22.160 --> 00:16:25.360 Hopefully with our blessing, I would love to see something we would 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:26.640 actually be happy with. 00:16:26.640 --> 00:16:30.720 But I think that by the end of this series, great many 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:33.360 of you are going to realize that that needs to exist. 00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:36.160 And yet it doesn't exist today and that's okay. 00:16:36.160 --> 00:16:40.960 If you die, God forbid or God willing, God permitting, before a 00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:44.560 new Septuagint translation exists, you're gonna go to heaven with a version 00:16:44.560 --> 00:16:47.040 you have that's based on the Masoretic text. 00:16:47.360 --> 00:16:50.000 Keep saying that as we go throughout this, because none of this 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:53.840 should undermine our faith in what we have, but we should yearn 00:16:53.840 --> 00:16:57.520 for that which God intended to transmit to us. 00:16:57.520 --> 00:17:01.440 And if there's a better version, we're gonna be talking about versions 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:03.680 here. We have to be very careful. 00:17:03.680 --> 00:17:08.320 None of this is about pursuing what fickle tastes people have. 00:17:08.320 --> 00:17:12.160 As I said, it's not about trying to find some version that 00:17:12.160 --> 00:17:16.240 I like better or that you would prefer because it makes some 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:17.840 point that you want to make. 00:17:17.840 --> 00:17:20.640 I frequently find that when I want to make points from the 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:23.680 Old Testament, when I go to the Septuagint, probably in about a 00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:26.480 third of cases, the point that I thought I could make just 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:27.440 kind of vanishes. 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:30.960 It's not some huge point, but some small theological point that I 00:17:30.960 --> 00:17:32.320 thought was going to be there. 00:17:32.320 --> 00:17:33.680 I just find it's not there. 00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:35.040 I find something else. 00:17:35.040 --> 00:17:36.560 And that's not a cause for concern. 00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:40.240 It's just the fact that okay, we're dealing with something different. 00:17:40.240 --> 00:17:42.320 Over the next few weeks we're going to be talking about 00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:47.760 why the Septuagint is different from any other translation you've ever heard 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:52.800 of, why the early church first used it and then later abandoned 00:17:52.800 --> 00:17:57.280 it, and then by the Reformation, why did we completely reject it? 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:00.480 What was the basis for those decisions? 00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:03.360 And one last point that I want to reiterate from the previous 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:07.600 episode: when we say that these men in history made mistakes, we 00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:11.120 are not calling them stupid, we are not calling them faithless. 00:18:11.120 --> 00:18:13.840 As I said in that episode, they were smart guys. 00:18:13.840 --> 00:18:15.920 They were incredibly good at what they were doing. 00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:17.600 They were trying to be faithful. 00:18:17.600 --> 00:18:21.920 Overwhelmingly. I wasn't gonna devote his life to translation and all these 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:24.000 things unless he truly cares. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.680 Even if we have disagreements about doctrine, I can't fault the faithfulness, 00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:31.360 especially for those men like Tyndale who went to their deaths fighting 00:18:31.360 --> 00:18:32.640 for this stuff. 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:35.920 They were not fools, they were not faithless. 00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:38.400 What we're going to lay out, and the reason for the episode 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:42.640 that we did recently on the context window is that if early 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.320 on in this story of the Septuagint, there was a decision that 00:18:46.320 --> 00:18:48.880 went one way instead of the other in the church. 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:52.400 And that decision has knock on effects a thousand years later. 00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:55.440 Those men who are subject to the knock on effects are going 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:56.640 to go in a different direction. 00:18:56.640 --> 00:18:59.280 And that's precisely what we see as we look through the entire 00:18:59.280 --> 00:19:04.000 history, when we start looking at Christian engagement and then disengagement with 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:10.240 the Septuagint, what we see is long planted decisions, very seemingly minor 00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:12.960 decisions that later on had profound effects. 00:19:12.960 --> 00:19:14.880 But at the time it didn't like a big deal. 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:17.760 And yet it's only in the fullness of time that you realize, 00:19:17.760 --> 00:19:21.760 wow, that one small detail that was, you know, a thousand, fifteen 00:19:21.920 --> 00:19:26.160 hundred years before some other detail, actually made all the difference. 00:19:26.160 --> 00:19:28.640 Because when the guy who was trying to do his very best 00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:32.400 made his decision and he didn't question that given from however long 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:34.960 ago, his decision was influenced by that. 00:19:34.960 --> 00:19:36.640 And that's what all this is about. 00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:38.320 What are our influences? 00:19:38.320 --> 00:19:41.360 Are they going to be the scripture that Jesus quoted or are 00:19:41.360 --> 00:19:43.600 they going to be something else? 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:44.960 So 00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:49.120 when we use the word translation in this context, we want to 00:19:49.120 --> 00:19:52.960 make sure that you understand specifically what it is we mean by 00:19:53.760 --> 00:19:56.320 translation, what a translation is. 00:19:56.320 --> 00:20:01.120 Undoubtedly, most of you listening, probably all of you listening, have books 00:20:01.120 --> 00:20:05.760 on your shelves that are translations from some other language. 00:20:05.760 --> 00:20:06.960 Whatever it happens to be. 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:10.320 I have a number on my shelves, I have some diglots, which 00:20:10.320 --> 00:20:14.240 is multiple languages, one being a translation of the other. 00:20:14.240 --> 00:20:17.520 That is a different thing from what we mean when we say 00:20:17.520 --> 00:20:20.800 that the Septuagint is a translation. 00:20:21.600 --> 00:20:24.880 This is for a number of reasons. 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:29.280 One we are going to contend as the church has long believed, 00:20:29.280 --> 00:20:32.000 that the Septuagint is inspired. 00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:37.760 There is a difference between an inspired translation and a mere translation. 00:20:37.760 --> 00:20:42.160 I have, for instance, a translation of Gata on my shelves. 00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:44.560 That's not inspired. 00:20:44.560 --> 00:20:48.000 It may very well be accurate, and it is indeed accurate. 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:53.040 It is true to the underlying, the original German text, but it 00:20:53.040 --> 00:20:55.520 is not the same as being inspired. 00:20:55.520 --> 00:20:58.880 When we are dealing with the Septuagint, what we are dealing with 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:04.080 is a translation of God's Word that is inspired by God. 00:21:04.080 --> 00:21:06.320 It is entirely faithful. 00:21:06.320 --> 00:21:09.040 It is God's Word. 00:21:09.040 --> 00:21:11.520 That is ultimately the point that we're making. 00:21:11.520 --> 00:21:15.440 The Septuagint is the Old Testament. 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:19.280 In fact, we will be making the point the Masoretic is not. 00:21:19.280 --> 00:21:23.120 And so that's what we mean when we say translation, because there 00:21:23.120 --> 00:21:29.520 is an older text to which we no longer have access, that 00:21:29.520 --> 00:21:32.880 God used at some point in the past to help with the 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:38.080 transmission of his word notably not just that written text, the oral 00:21:38.080 --> 00:21:40.560 tradition that accompanied it was also necessary. 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:43.040 I'll get into that more in a minute here. 00:21:43.040 --> 00:21:45.440 But that existed in the past. 00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:46.880 We do not have it. 00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:48.240 It no longer exists. 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.880 God caused his word to be translated into the Greek, and that 00:21:52.880 --> 00:21:55.360 is what he has preserved. 00:21:55.360 --> 00:21:56.880 That is his word. 00:21:56.880 --> 00:22:00.560 He promised to preserve his word and he did so, but he 00:22:00.560 --> 00:22:03.920 did so in the Greek. 00:22:03.920 --> 00:22:08.240 A few preliminary points before we get into the history proper just 00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:11.920 to frame things and give you a sort of foundation upon which 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:15.520 to build the rest of the content in these episodes, particularly the 00:22:15.520 --> 00:22:17.200 first two. 00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:20.400 There are a number of different systems that you can use for 00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:22.160 writing a language. 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:23.680 We are speaking English. 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:26.960 We are accustomed to an alphabet in which we use letters. 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:30.000 The The letters do not really have any meaning. 00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:35.600 They are symbols that represent things when they are connected to each 00:22:35.600 --> 00:22:40.240 other, except for obviously in the instance of words that comprise one 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:45.600 letter or comprised of one letter, A, I, things like that. 00:22:45.600 --> 00:22:48.320 That's not the case for all languages. 00:22:48.320 --> 00:22:53.680 So for instance, you have Chinese, in which the character actually means 00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:56.320 a word or it means a concept. 00:22:56.320 --> 00:23:00.800 The same thing is true for Japanese, although Japanese also has symbols 00:23:00.800 --> 00:23:03.440 that represent syllables instead of concepts. 00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:07.440 We're talking about logograms and syllabograms. 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:10.880 Hebrew uses what is called an objod. 00:23:10.880 --> 00:23:17.280 An objod, unlike our alphabet or certain other systems of writing, is 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:22.000 a writing system that writes down only consonants. 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:24.480 The vowels are not included. 00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:28.960 Now that may not seem that important until you start thinking about 00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:33.200 how much of our language is comprised of vowels. 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:35.200 This varies across languages. 00:23:35.200 --> 00:23:41.200 English is 40-ish percent vowel, German is slightly less than that, some 00:23:41.360 --> 00:23:44.960 languages are significantly more, Hawaiian for instance. 00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:49.280 Hebrew is somewhere between thirty and forty percent vowel. 00:23:49.280 --> 00:23:54.000 Now that of course is modern Hebrew, which is close enough for 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:58.400 our purposes when talking about consonants and vowels notably not when talking 00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:04.160 about mutual intelligibility, but when talking about consonant versus vowel ratio, it's 00:24:04.080 --> 00:24:05.760 close enough. 00:24:05.760 --> 00:24:10.320 If you take away 30 to 40 percent of a language, how 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:13.360 comprehensible does that language remain? 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:15.760 The answer is not very 00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:21.920 The answer is certainly not sufficient for the Word of God, from 00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:24.560 which nothing will be lost. 00:24:24.560 --> 00:24:27.440 God promised that it will be preserved. 00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:33.840 Having an abjad is not sufficient for preservation, without the oral tradition 00:24:33.840 --> 00:24:37.360 that accompanied it with Old Testament Israel. 00:24:37.360 --> 00:24:41.200 You see, it is the oral tradition that God used to fulfil 00:24:41.360 --> 00:24:45.360 his promise of the preservation of his word, because he had the 00:24:45.360 --> 00:24:48.960 priests. He spoke directly with the people of Israel. 00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:53.920 It was preserved not just according to the portion of it that 00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:58.320 was written, because not all of it was written, again, no vowels. 00:24:58.320 --> 00:25:02.480 It was preserved because the oral tradition came alongside it and helped 00:25:02.480 --> 00:25:03.040 to preserve it. 00:25:03.040 --> 00:25:07.600 You can think of it in modern terms perhaps as the written 00:25:07.600 --> 00:25:11.760 portion being a sort of shorthand, or cliff notes perhaps, not quite 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:14.960 cliffnotes, but it gives you the basic idea. 00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:18.240 And then the oral tradition is what gives you the fullness of 00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:23.120 it. If you have an inspired oral tradition, if you have a 00:25:23.120 --> 00:25:29.200 priestly caste instituted and preserved by God, that can communicate directly with 00:25:29.200 --> 00:25:29.440 God, 00:25:30.320 --> 00:25:32.400 that's possible, that's something that can be done. 00:25:32.400 --> 00:25:35.360 God can certainly do that, and that it's exactly what we see 00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:37.520 in the Old Testament. 00:25:37.520 --> 00:25:43.280 But God destroyed the temple and destroyed the priestly caste, destroyed Old 00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:49.520 Testament Israel, did not preserve the Old Testament in some written form, 00:25:49.520 --> 00:25:53.280 some new form of Hebrew that actually writes down the vowels, as 00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:57.360 we will come to see the Masoretes did, but that is developed 00:25:57.360 --> 00:25:59.440 long after this period. 00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:02.800 And so how did God preserve his word? 00:26:02.800 --> 00:26:07.520 Because you have this giant gap in terms of the inspired Hebrew 00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:12.400 to which we no longer have access, the written plus the oral 00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:17.520 tradition, and the creation of the Masoretic text. 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:20.720 Well the way that God preserved it is by having it translated 00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:25.440 into Greek, which does in fact write down its vowels, does in 00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:28.720 fact have a fully written form of the language. 00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:33.040 Ancient Hebrew and some forms of Arabic do not have a truly 00:26:33.040 --> 00:26:36.320 written form of the language because they don't write down the whole 00:26:36.320 --> 00:26:40.720 language. You have to know what is written in order to understand 00:26:40.720 --> 00:26:41.840 what is written. 00:26:41.840 --> 00:26:44.880 There are some obvious shortcomings there. 00:26:45.360 --> 00:26:50.640 You could look at by way of contrast, the father language, as 00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:54.800 it were, the ultimate father language of the Shemitic languages, which would 00:26:54.800 --> 00:26:58.480 be Akkadian, is the oldest Shemitic language of which we're aware. 00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:04.560 It was written in cuneiform, which uses logograms and syllabograms the same 00:27:04.560 --> 00:27:07.040 as modern Japanese, for instance. 00:27:07.040 --> 00:27:10.480 And so the entirety of that language is written in a way 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:12.880 that you can read it and understand it, assuming that you know 00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:18.240 ancient Akkadian, which chances are you probably don't, very few men do. 00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:22.160 But essentially what we have is descended from this other Shemitic languages 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:26.400 that use a degenerated form of writing that does not write down 00:27:26.400 --> 00:27:29.840 the fullness of the language. 00:27:29.840 --> 00:27:34.720 This leads into an important point that virtually everyone misses when reading 00:27:34.720 --> 00:27:37.360 the Old Testament because it's simply not taught when it when it 00:27:37.360 --> 00:27:42.720 very well should be, if you were to take a modern so-called 00:27:42.720 --> 00:27:48.160 Hebrew Bible and hand it to Adam, he would not be able 00:27:48.160 --> 00:27:49.520 to read it. 00:27:49.520 --> 00:27:51.120 He didn't speak Hebrew. 00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:53.520 Hebrew did not exist yet. 00:27:53.520 --> 00:27:57.600 If you were to hand it to Job, he would not be 00:27:57.600 --> 00:27:58.720 able to read it. 00:27:58.720 --> 00:28:02.720 The script didn't exist yet, and that form of Hebrew didn't exist 00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:07.040 yet. If you were to hand it to Abram, or Abraham, whichever 00:28:07.040 --> 00:28:10.080 name you want to use, he would not be able to read 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:12.880 it, because he did not speak Hebrew. 00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:14.640 It did not exist yet. 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:18.240 In fact, he was from Ur of the Chaldeans, which spoke a 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:21.600 version of Akkadian, so that he knew. 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:26.480 He eventually came to know some version of perhaps Proto Hebrew, a 00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:30.880 Canaanite language when he was sojourning But he did not speak the 00:28:30.880 --> 00:28:36.960 Hebrew so-called that we use today in the Masoretic text. 00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:40.560 And in fact, the alphabet, as we have pointed out, that is 00:28:40.560 --> 00:28:44.240 used for modern Hebrew, is in fact Aramaic, it is in fact 00:28:44.320 --> 00:28:49.120 Babylonian, it is not Hebrew, it is a different alphabet. 00:28:49.760 --> 00:28:53.760 So if you took what we are told is the Old Testament 00:28:53.760 --> 00:28:56.640 in Hebrew, and handed it to these men who supposedly should be 00:28:56.640 --> 00:29:01.280 able to understand this, as it is taught in so many churches, 00:29:01.280 --> 00:29:04.160 not one of them would know what you had handed them. 00:29:04.160 --> 00:29:08.240 It would be as incomprehensible to them as handing Chinese would be 00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:11.120 to me, I don't know how to read any Chinese. 00:29:11.120 --> 00:29:13.680 Not any, some very tiny amount. 00:29:13.680 --> 00:29:17.360 It would be essentially incomprehensible to me. 00:29:17.360 --> 00:29:19.680 That is the same thing you would be doing with these men 00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:21.120 in the Old Testament. 00:29:21.760 --> 00:29:26.080 Because think about what we know of the relatively short story, as 00:29:26.080 --> 00:29:29.040 it were, in Genesis about the Tower of Babel. 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:31.840 They had one language in the same words. 00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:35.200 You don't see this division into language families, one of which is 00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:38.800 shemitic, coming from Akkadian essentially. 00:29:39.120 --> 00:29:43.600 You don't see that happening until God comes down and confuses their 00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:45.760 language and disperses them. 00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:49.840 Hebrew doesn't exist before then, not even in a proto-form. 00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:53.520 Neither incidentally do any of the other languages that we speak today. 00:29:53.520 --> 00:29:56.800 I know that I've joked that the original language was something related 00:29:56.800 --> 00:30:01.040 to German, but it's not, because we see Proto-Indo-European or whatever the 00:30:01.040 --> 00:30:06.640 ancestor language was occurring here at the Tower of Babel. 00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:10.320 And so it's important to bear these things in mind as we 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:16.240 go through the history of the Hebrew language and the transmission of 00:30:16.240 --> 00:30:20.800 Scripture. Because if you don't have these in mind, you're going to 00:30:20.800 --> 00:30:25.360 have a false sense of what actually happens in the Old Testament, 00:30:25.360 --> 00:30:29.600 of what God tells us about the history of all mankind. 00:30:29.600 --> 00:30:33.920 Because of course the Old Testament is not just about Old Testament 00:30:33.920 --> 00:30:36.400 Israel. It's not just about the Jews. 00:30:36.400 --> 00:30:40.720 Because incidentally, the men I mentioned weren't Jews. 00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:42.720 Adam was not a Jew. 00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:45.040 Abram was not a Jew. 00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:46.960 Job was not a Jew. 00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:49.200 Noah was not a Jew. 00:30:49.200 --> 00:30:52.240 This is the history of mankind that is contained in the Old 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:58.160 Testament. And if we narrow this focus down to Old Testament Israel, 00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:01.280 then we miss the reality, the fullness of what God is telling 00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:04.560 us, and we're going to come away with false interpretations, which is 00:31:04.560 --> 00:31:09.200 part of what led into the ability of Satan to take this 00:31:09.520 --> 00:31:14.880 construct that we call Hebrew and shoehorn it into the church and 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:19.120 push out the Greek, and basically replace the word of God with 00:31:19.120 --> 00:31:20.480 a counterfeit. 00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:25.520 Now again, as Woe said in his introduction, and as I'm going 00:31:25.520 --> 00:31:29.840 to emphasize here, and we will repeat a number of times: by 00:31:29.840 --> 00:31:35.840 the grace of God, He preserved His Word even through the Masoretic 00:31:35.840 --> 00:31:41.920 text. It is not perfect, of course, because the one that actually 00:31:41.920 --> 00:31:46.080 was preserved by God in the way that he promised is the 00:31:46.080 --> 00:31:50.560 Greek. But he did not allow the Masoretes to tamper with his 00:31:50.720 --> 00:31:53.360 word to the point where it is so corrupted it is no 00:31:53.360 --> 00:31:55.360 longer the word of God. 00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:58.720 There is such a thing as an imperfect translation. 00:31:58.720 --> 00:32:03.120 An imperfect translation is not necessarily useless. 00:32:03.120 --> 00:32:06.000 It's not even necessarily harmful. 00:32:07.280 --> 00:32:10.960 You can be a Christian, you can have a true and living 00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:14.960 faith that believes in the true things of God by having the 00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:19.280 Masoretic text as your Old Testament, translated obviously into a language you 00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:25.600 understand. Most of My Bibles have the Masoretic text as the underlying 00:32:25.600 --> 00:32:26.880 text of the Old Testament. 00:32:26.880 --> 00:32:27.360 Not all. 00:32:27.360 --> 00:32:31.120 I have several Septuagint on my shelves. 00:32:31.120 --> 00:32:34.240 I have the Lexum, I have the Brenton, I have various other 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:39.680 documents. But for those who listen to the Daily Devotions podcast, for 00:32:39.680 --> 00:32:43.360 instance, you'll note that I am still reading from the ESV. 00:32:43.360 --> 00:32:47.040 Despite the research we've done, despite all the things we've read, despite 00:32:47.040 --> 00:32:50.080 the arguments we're going to make in these episodes, I am still 00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:55.920 reading from a translation of scripture that has the Masoretic text underlying 00:32:55.920 --> 00:32:58.320 it as the Old Testament. 00:32:58.320 --> 00:33:03.120 I don't think that reading translations done from the Masoretic text is 00:33:03.120 --> 00:33:06.480 a bad thing because you are still reading the Word of God 00:33:06.480 --> 00:33:07.680 in translation. 00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:12.560 What we are arguing is that the preserved Word of God, the 00:33:12.560 --> 00:33:18.000 divinely inspired translation of Scripture that is accessible to the church today, 00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:21.440 and upon which the church, the New Testament Church in the New 00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:24.880 Testament era, was founded. 00:33:24.880 --> 00:33:28.320 The text that it used to grow and spread the Word of 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:33.040 God, that text is the Septuagint, it is the Greek. 00:33:33.040 --> 00:33:36.880 It is not the Hebrew, because at this point the Hebrew didn't 00:33:36.800 --> 00:33:40.320 even exist, which is the history that we will be going through 00:33:40.320 --> 00:33:44.240 for the balance of this episode. 00:33:44.400 --> 00:33:44.480 I 00:33:44.640 --> 00:33:48.400 just like to briefly hearken back to the apostasy episode we did 00:33:48.400 --> 00:33:50.640 January twenty twenty four. 00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:53.600 One of the things that we talked about at length was King 00:33:53.600 --> 00:34:00.320 Josiah. In I think 2 Kings 22, it describes the discovery of 00:34:00.320 --> 00:34:02.560 scripture in the temple. 00:34:02.560 --> 00:34:06.080 They had not only misplaced it, but they forgot it existed. 00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:09.040 And this had been the case for long enough that there was 00:34:09.040 --> 00:34:12.320 demon worship going on inside God's temple and all around. 00:34:12.320 --> 00:34:14.640 And King Josiah was a part of it. 00:34:14.640 --> 00:34:18.640 And when they found Scripture and they brought it to him, and 00:34:19.040 --> 00:34:23.040 he heard it, he tore his cloaks, and he was horrified. 00:34:23.040 --> 00:34:27.920 He repented immediately, because he believed in God, even though scripture was 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:31.760 gone. Because some of the word we don't know what was preserved 00:34:31.760 --> 00:34:35.680 orally. We don't know what was preserved tradition wise. 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:40.480 There was obviously not enough preserved of Christianity for King Josiah not 00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:42.960 to know better than to be worshiping demons. 00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:46.080 And yet when he realized that that's what he'd been doing, he 00:34:46.080 --> 00:34:48.560 was instantly cut to the quick. 00:34:48.560 --> 00:34:52.320 And so this is a circumstance in scripture, in both the Masoretic 00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:56.480 and the Septuagint, they'd say basically the same thing about this story. 00:34:56.480 --> 00:35:00.240 God for a time permitted scripture to be lost among his people 00:35:00.240 --> 00:35:01.600 because they were faithless. 00:35:01.600 --> 00:35:05.040 They were so faithless, not only did they misplace the Bible, they 00:35:05.040 --> 00:35:06.480 forgot it existed. 00:35:06.480 --> 00:35:08.000 They weren't looking for it. 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:10.320 It wasn't lost like you lose your keys. 00:35:10.320 --> 00:35:13.440 That's the analogy I make in the apostasy episode. 00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:16.800 It was so lost that they didn't know that it was gone. 00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:20.720 We're in much better shape today, because although we've lost the Greek 00:35:20.720 --> 00:35:24.800 Old Testament that Jesus used, what we're using is pretty close. 00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:28.640 And so on one hand, like we're threading a needle here that's 00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:30.320 incredibly difficult. 00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:35.360 On one hand, we have to emphasize that faithfulness to God's word 00:35:35.680 --> 00:35:37.120 is paramount. 00:35:37.120 --> 00:35:41.200 And in a few years, God willing when there is a faithful 00:35:41.200 --> 00:35:45.840 translation exclusively of Greek, I will change my tune and say this 00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:47.120 is what we should be using. 00:35:47.120 --> 00:35:50.880 Not because it's new and shiny, but because it's old and faithful. 00:35:50.880 --> 00:35:55.040 That should be the bar for any translation in any era. 00:35:55.040 --> 00:35:58.960 But until such time we're gonna do the best we can, even 00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:00.880 knowing that it's imperfect. 00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:01.200 And 00:36:02.160 --> 00:36:07.200 it's one of these cases where it's almost impossible to discuss things 00:36:07.200 --> 00:36:12.000 in terms of degrees of sinfulness, because what do you even say? 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:14.400 What do you say when you realize, as I have and as 00:36:14.400 --> 00:36:19.040 Corey has, and as you will, that we've been using a text 00:36:19.040 --> 00:36:22.480 that is not actually exactly what God breathed out. 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:24.560 It's not what Jesus used. 00:36:24.560 --> 00:36:27.680 And so in those episodes where we deal specifically with the text, 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:31.520 we'll make that case in at length, especially in the fourth episode. 00:36:31.520 --> 00:36:34.160 We're not saving him for any particular reason other than we're working 00:36:34.160 --> 00:36:36.720 through this in chronological order. 00:36:36.720 --> 00:36:41.760 But it's just crucial to emphasize how disruptive the idea of all 00:36:41.760 --> 00:36:42.800 of this is. 00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:45.600 That's why I'm glad that this turned out to be our 100th 00:36:45.600 --> 00:36:47.360 episode. This is a huge deal. 00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:49.680 We're not just talking about a translation. 00:36:49.680 --> 00:36:52.320 But at the same time, we also have the deal with the 00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:53.600 status quo ante. 00:36:53.600 --> 00:36:57.280 Right now, all my Bibles are based on something that I think 00:36:57.280 --> 00:36:59.760 should never have existed in the first place. 00:36:59.760 --> 00:37:02.320 I'm not going to burn all my Bibles today, I'm not going 00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:05.360 to curse them and hate them, and you shouldn't either. 00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:08.880 God has worked through the word even when men have messed with 00:37:08.880 --> 00:37:12.080 it. Just as in Josiah's day God worked through whatever it was 00:37:12.080 --> 00:37:13.520 the priests were preaching. 00:37:13.520 --> 00:37:16.000 It couldn't have been that great, but there was still something about 00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:21.120 the true God, such that God recognized Josiah's faithfulness And preserved him 00:37:21.200 --> 00:37:22.720 and blessed his reign. 00:37:22.720 --> 00:37:25.440 And it didn't fall apart again until he died and his son 00:37:25.440 --> 00:37:26.720 took over. 00:37:26.720 --> 00:37:30.080 So I hope that this isn't received as a mixed message. 00:37:30.160 --> 00:37:31.520 It's just really complicated. 00:37:31.520 --> 00:37:33.680 And that was also part of the reason we did episode ninety 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:36.320 nine talking about trying to take all this in. 00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:39.520 It's gonna seem if you're just cherry picking that we're talking out 00:37:39.520 --> 00:37:41.280 of both sides of our mouth. 00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:45.600 Because how can the Septuagint matter if Corey's still reading from the 00:37:45.600 --> 00:37:47.680 ESV. Isn't that hypocritical? 00:37:47.680 --> 00:37:50.080 We're gonna try to make the case is no it's not. 00:37:50.080 --> 00:37:55.600 But the crucial point is that we have several thousand years of 00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:59.920 wrong decisions to unwind, and until such time as those decisions have 00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:03.120 been unwound, we're going to be stuck in a position where we 00:38:03.120 --> 00:38:04.640 don't have everything perfect. 00:38:04.640 --> 00:38:07.840 This is essentially the state that Luther was in at the beginning 00:38:07.840 --> 00:38:09.360 of the Reformation. 00:38:09.360 --> 00:38:15.760 When he actually read the original Greek, Galatians, and Romans, he realized 00:38:15.760 --> 00:38:20.080 something that he hadn't seen previously, and he repented just as Josiah 00:38:20.080 --> 00:38:22.880 repented. And then when he told other guys, hey, look what I 00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:24.640 found, they're tried to kill him. 00:38:24.640 --> 00:38:27.440 They threw him out of the church, they excommunicated him. 00:38:27.440 --> 00:38:28.960 It was a huge deal. 00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:32.000 It was far more disruptive than he had intended, because he just 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:34.480 wanted to say, hey, God says this, we should do this. 00:38:34.480 --> 00:38:37.920 It turned out that was not permissible in the Roman Catholic Church 00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:38.320 at that time. 00:38:38.640 --> 00:38:44.080 And the Reformation was born out of their resistance to God's word. 00:38:44.080 --> 00:38:48.960 And that was even done with him using the Masoretic. 00:38:49.040 --> 00:38:52.880 The second episode we talk about history, Luther got all this stuff 00:38:52.880 --> 00:38:53.840 wrong too. 00:38:53.840 --> 00:38:55.920 Am I saying he's stupid and unfaithful? 00:38:55.920 --> 00:38:56.960 Absolutely not. 00:38:56.960 --> 00:38:59.120 But if he made one mistake that we're gonna get to at 00:38:59.120 --> 00:39:03.680 the end of this episode, probably, that's the shooting match. 00:39:03.760 --> 00:39:06.560 I've said before I was a libertarian for 20 years. 00:39:06.560 --> 00:39:10.000 I never examined the priors that led me to be a libertarian. 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:12.880 I had the blessing of others who were Christians and I trusted 00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:14.080 their judgment. 00:39:14.080 --> 00:39:17.440 And I could sort of rationalize it by ignoring the parts that 00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:18.400 were godless. 00:39:18.560 --> 00:39:22.720 It was only when I took a fresh and critical look, just 00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:26.560 setting all the economics and everything else aside and said, Okay, is 00:39:26.560 --> 00:39:27.600 this moral? 00:39:27.600 --> 00:39:29.600 Then I couldn't be libertarian anymore. 00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:33.760 So I repented of something I'd done for decades adamantly. 00:39:33.760 --> 00:39:36.800 I spent a lot of time and money and energy on that. 00:39:36.800 --> 00:39:41.200 But my repentance wasn't a radical change of me as a human 00:39:41.200 --> 00:39:45.360 being. I just realized that I'd made one mistake twenty years ago 00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:46.640 about a small question. 00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:50.720 And when I finally got that question right, it changed everything downstream. 00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:53.760 Didn't change who I was, but in order to be faithful to 00:39:53.760 --> 00:39:56.240 God, I realized I had to set something aside. 00:39:56.400 --> 00:39:57.840 We did an episode on repentance. 00:39:57.840 --> 00:39:59.200 That's what repentance is. 00:39:59.200 --> 00:40:00.800 It's not just feeling sorry. 00:40:00.800 --> 00:40:03.360 It's when you realize that you've made a mistake at some point 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:06.800 in the past, when you've sinned at some point in the past. 00:40:06.800 --> 00:40:09.120 You look at that and you're disgusted and you reject it and 00:40:09.120 --> 00:40:10.080 say, that's not me. 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:13.760 That's what Josiah did, that's what Luther did, and it's what we're 00:40:13.760 --> 00:40:14.880 doing with this. 00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:17.200 But until such time as everything is fixed and we have a 00:40:17.200 --> 00:40:22.480 great Septuagint-based Old Testament Bible that we can recommend, it is what 00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:22.880 it is. 00:40:22.880 --> 00:40:25.680 We're stuck in a situation where we have to muddle through. 00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:28.880 So, like I said at the beginning, our recommendation to you for 00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:31.840 right now is the same as it was in the lesser feedback 00:40:31.840 --> 00:40:36.320 episode. If you want to make some fiddly specific point about a 00:40:36.320 --> 00:40:40.720 passage, you should go back and look at a Septuagint translation. 00:40:40.720 --> 00:40:42.400 Because it's gonna differ. 00:40:42.400 --> 00:40:46.240 Like for now, you can look at the Masoretic based translations too, 00:40:46.240 --> 00:40:47.520 compare them side by side. 00:40:47.520 --> 00:40:48.960 Maybe they're basically the same. 00:40:48.960 --> 00:40:50.080 Sometimes they are. 00:40:50.080 --> 00:40:52.560 Sometimes it's they're indistinguishable. 00:40:52.560 --> 00:40:55.360 Sometimes they're wildly different. 00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:56.320 So just look. 00:40:56.320 --> 00:40:56.960 But that's it. 00:40:56.960 --> 00:40:59.520 It's not to undermine faith or confidence in the Bible you have. 00:40:59.520 --> 00:41:02.720 It's to say when we look at the history of things, we 00:41:02.720 --> 00:41:06.640 find that God wiped out the Hebrew, as Corey was talking about, 00:41:06.640 --> 00:41:09.680 and left the church exclusively with Greek. 00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:14.080 When we look at that early period, our conclusion to this whole 00:41:14.080 --> 00:41:18.080 thing is that we must repent and go back to that. 00:41:18.080 --> 00:41:23.280 Not because it's old, because it predates any influence from the people 00:41:23.280 --> 00:41:24.960 who killed Christ. 00:41:24.960 --> 00:41:27.200 Recording this episode immediately after Easter. 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:30.080 It was originally gonna be dropping the week of Easter. 00:41:30.080 --> 00:41:33.520 We decided it would be too disruptive and we didn't be disrespectful 00:41:33.520 --> 00:41:34.560 to Holy Week. 00:41:34.560 --> 00:41:37.280 Not that there's anything wrong with this episode, but there's a time 00:41:37.280 --> 00:41:39.440 and a place to focus on other things. 00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:42.480 So So in this first week of Easter, we're going to be 00:41:42.480 --> 00:41:46.000 talking about something that is in a way a rebirth of something 00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:49.120 that we've lost for b nearly two thousand years. 00:41:49.120 --> 00:41:51.680 That doesn't mean that it's gimmicky. 00:41:51.680 --> 00:41:56.240 It's something that no one ever thought to question or to doubt. 00:41:56.240 --> 00:42:00.240 It just sort of faded, principally because language changed. 00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:04.000 For a time Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, 00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:07.600 and then later on Latin became the lingua franca. 00:42:07.600 --> 00:42:11.520 When that happened, they had to translate into Latin, and that was 00:42:11.520 --> 00:42:13.680 when this really got set in motion. 00:42:13.680 --> 00:42:17.280 But it still took another seven or eight hundred years before things 00:42:17.280 --> 00:42:18.320 really got off the rails. 00:42:18.320 --> 00:42:23.360 So the history we present today is gonna tell that story. 00:42:23.680 --> 00:42:25.600 I already situated the 00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:31.200 ancient Hebrew language to some degree as being from the Shemitic family 00:42:31.200 --> 00:42:36.480 of languages, being related to Akkadian, indeed related to Arabic in some 00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:43.120 ways. And essentially that is where the story of Hebrew starts. 00:42:43.120 --> 00:42:49.200 We don't get what we would call ancient or biblical Hebrew until 00:42:49.520 --> 00:42:53.200 essentially the time of the conquest of Canaan. 00:42:53.200 --> 00:42:57.520 And an important point is to bear in mind that Hebrew is 00:42:57.520 --> 00:43:00.160 a a Canaanite language. 00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:04.160 It is not unrelated to the Canaanites, it is not from somewhere 00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:09.040 foreign, it is in fact a Canaanite language, and so for instance, 00:43:09.040 --> 00:43:14.000 Job, being an Edomite, would also have spoken a Canaanite language. 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:18.720 Perhaps they would have been to some degree mutually intelligible, we don't 00:43:18.640 --> 00:43:20.240 necessarily know that. 00:43:20.240 --> 00:43:23.360 But they were related, perhaps like Dutch or German, maybe a little 00:43:23.360 --> 00:43:27.920 more distant than that, but somewhere in that vicinity. 00:43:27.920 --> 00:43:33.680 Notably this does mean that most likely Moses when he originally wrote 00:43:33.680 --> 00:43:39.040 the original monographs of the first five books of Scripture, the Pentateuch, 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:43.520 notably we name it after the Greek, those would have been written 00:43:43.520 --> 00:43:48.800 in a Proto-Hebrew, because what would become Biblical Hebrew 00:43:49.680 --> 00:43:56.080 really develops into that language around the time of the unified kingdom. 00:43:56.080 --> 00:43:57.680 So that's to say David and Solomon. 00:43:57.680 --> 00:44:01.200 That's where you get that sort of solidified into what we would 00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:03.600 call biblical Hebrew. 00:44:03.600 --> 00:44:07.040 This is similar to perhaps the development that we have seen in 00:44:07.040 --> 00:44:11.200 the English language, because we of course are speaking modern English right 00:44:11.200 --> 00:44:14.880 now. There is such a thing as Middle English, and it is 00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:19.520 related very closely to modern English, but it is difficult to read 00:44:19.520 --> 00:44:22.560 for a modern English speaker, unless you have spent some time learning 00:44:22.560 --> 00:44:25.520 it, because it is essentially almost a foreign language. 00:44:25.520 --> 00:44:28.240 So even within a single language you can have that sort of 00:44:28.240 --> 00:44:33.040 development Over a period of centuries or in the case we're talking 00:44:33.040 --> 00:44:38.560 about now, thousands of years, there is development of a language. 00:44:38.560 --> 00:44:43.120 But insofar as the Hebrew language, the ancient Hebrew language is concerned, 00:44:43.120 --> 00:44:46.080 which is what we typically mean when we say Hebrew, until we 00:44:46.080 --> 00:44:49.600 get into the modern era, start dealing with the Mazoretes and then 00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:54.800 the resurrection so called of Hebrew in the nineteen hundreds in the 00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:00.240 twentieth century, because modern Hebrew is essentially a distinct language, it is 00:45:00.240 --> 00:45:05.440 a different thing, related deliberately because it is a constructed language, but 00:45:05.440 --> 00:45:09.120 distinct from ancient Hebrew, distinct from biblical Hebrew. 00:45:09.120 --> 00:45:13.120 So bear in mind, there's not that continuity there that people would 00:45:13.120 --> 00:45:14.720 like to try to claim. 00:45:14.720 --> 00:45:17.600 They are different things. 00:45:17.600 --> 00:45:23.920 But insofar as Hebrew is concerned, we see its usage during the 00:45:23.920 --> 00:45:29.840 period of the conquest of Canaan, leading up to the unified monarchy 00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:33.520 under David and then Solomon, we see it in use in the 00:45:33.520 --> 00:45:39.040 northern kingdom and in the southern kingdom until the exiles. 00:45:39.040 --> 00:45:42.320 And the exiles take place at different times. 00:45:42.320 --> 00:45:46.000 You have the Assyrian exile, which is of course the northern kingdom, 00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:50.240 the Kingdom of Israel, that is in seven twenty two BC, and 00:45:50.240 --> 00:45:53.760 you have the Babylonian exile which takes place later, that is in 00:45:53.760 --> 00:45:57.600 five hundred eighty six BC, that is of the southern kingdom of 00:45:57.600 --> 00:46:05.040 Judah. This is really when you see the true downfall, the diminishment, 00:46:05.040 --> 00:46:08.640 and the eventual erasure of the Hebrew language. 00:46:08.640 --> 00:46:11.840 Now, of course, languages don't typically die overnight. 00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:13.680 That's not how things work. 00:46:13.840 --> 00:46:20.800 How a language typically dies is it becomes diminished through replacement. 00:46:20.800 --> 00:46:25.120 Usually this takes place because some other language, a foreign language, comes 00:46:25.120 --> 00:46:30.720 from elsewhere, starts to gain usage in the region and then eventually 00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:35.680 becomes predominant, which is indeed what happens with regard to Hebrew. 00:46:35.680 --> 00:46:39.280 The case of the Assyrian vs the Babylonian exile 00:46:40.240 --> 00:46:43.440 these are different, and the reason for that is that the Assyrians 00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:47.120 and the Babylonians did not deal with their conquered peoples in the 00:46:47.120 --> 00:46:48.160 same way. 00:46:48.160 --> 00:46:51.760 The Assyrians wanted to make sure their conquered peoples could never rise 00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:53.440 up again and challenge them. 00:46:53.440 --> 00:46:56.480 So what they did, we've described this in previous episodes, but I'll 00:46:56.480 --> 00:47:01.680 describe it again, they would take peoples from the conquered territory and 00:47:01.680 --> 00:47:04.640 move them to other parts of the empire, and they would take 00:47:04.640 --> 00:47:07.440 peoples from other parts of the empire and move them into the 00:47:07.440 --> 00:47:13.040 conquered territory, and then encourage them to intermix, to intermarry, because that 00:47:13.040 --> 00:47:18.160 would destroy the distinctness of that conquered people, and then they would 00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:20.000 not rise up, they would not rebel. 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:21.920 This actually works very well. 00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:24.800 That's not to say it's a good thing, it's certainly wicked, it's 00:47:24.800 --> 00:47:27.760 immoral, but it does work. 00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:32.720 And so as part of this, they essentially erased Hebrew, because the 00:47:32.720 --> 00:47:37.600 language of the Assyrians was indeed not Hebrew. 00:47:37.600 --> 00:47:41.360 Early on it would have been Akkadian, but eventually that was replaced 00:47:41.360 --> 00:47:42.800 by Aramaic. 00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:47.040 And so that is why you see Aramaic spoken in this area 00:47:47.280 --> 00:47:50.800 in the centuries leading up to the time of Christ, and in 00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:52.720 fact still spoken in the time of Christ. 00:47:52.720 --> 00:47:55.520 It was one of the languages of the region, not the only 00:47:55.520 --> 00:47:58.480 language, because they also spoke Greek, which we'll be getting to the 00:47:58.480 --> 00:48:02.320 history of why Greek was also in this region, but you have 00:48:02.320 --> 00:48:04.560 Aramaic in this region. 00:48:04.560 --> 00:48:08.720 The same thing happens, in a slightly different way, with the Babylonian 00:48:08.720 --> 00:48:14.160 exile. The Babylonians did not seek to completely destroy their conquered peoples, 00:48:14.160 --> 00:48:15.920 and so they ruled them in a different way. 00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:19.200 They would take some peoples from the territory and take them to 00:48:19.200 --> 00:48:22.240 Babylon. Basically, you're sort of holding them as not quite 00:48:23.280 --> 00:48:26.480 hostages, but at the same time sort of hostages. 00:48:26.480 --> 00:48:28.720 This was a very common practice all over the world. 00:48:28.720 --> 00:48:31.600 Typically what you would do is you would take the sons of 00:48:31.600 --> 00:48:34.000 nobility and hold them in your palace. 00:48:34.000 --> 00:48:37.280 You would train them to be functionaries of the Empire, but at 00:48:37.280 --> 00:48:39.920 the same time it was an implicit threat against those in the 00:48:39.920 --> 00:48:41.920 conquered territory. 00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:45.920 The threat is kind of obvious, it doesn't need to be explained. 00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:51.440 But the Babylonian Empire used Aramaic, and so Aramaic started to make 00:48:51.440 --> 00:48:56.160 inroads in the conquered territories, because it was the language of empire. 00:48:56.160 --> 00:48:58.480 This is the same thing that we see taking place with every 00:48:58.480 --> 00:49:01.760 empire. It's one of the reasons, in fact, that English is so 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:06.000 widespread, and there are those who are listening to this in English, 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:09.520 in parts of the world where English is not the native language, 00:49:09.520 --> 00:49:11.040 is not the first language. 00:49:11.040 --> 00:49:14.720 It is because of history, it is because of the British Empire, 00:49:14.720 --> 00:49:18.560 and it is because of the cultural hegemony of the United States. 00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:24.080 A discussion for another time, but this sort of development of the 00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:28.240 mixture of languages in a region and which language is dominant at 00:49:28.240 --> 00:49:32.880 a given time, it develops because of politics, essentially. 00:49:32.880 --> 00:49:36.160 There's a cultural component, but it is largely politics. 00:49:36.160 --> 00:49:41.920 It is which power is preeminent, which empire is transcendent at a 00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:46.560 given time, because the language or language is, because some empires use 00:49:46.560 --> 00:49:52.640 multiple, used by the empire, it's obviously going to have influence. 00:49:52.640 --> 00:49:55.200 It's going to have a pull because you want to understand the 00:49:55.200 --> 00:50:00.800 decrees of the imperial seat, for instance, you want to understand the 00:50:00.800 --> 00:50:04.160 literature of that empire, and people are going to use it for 00:50:04.160 --> 00:50:05.360 commerce, for instance. 00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:08.640 This is one of the reasons that Greek grew so rapidly in 00:50:08.640 --> 00:50:11.840 the region after certain conquests we'll get into that. 00:50:11.840 --> 00:50:13.280 It was commerce. 00:50:13.280 --> 00:50:15.280 But the same thing is true here. 00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:21.200 And notably, it is not just during the conquest that you see 00:50:21.200 --> 00:50:25.040 Aramaic popping up in this area. 00:50:25.040 --> 00:50:31.520 Because in fact, Aramaic already existed in, for instance, the Southern Kingdom, 00:50:31.520 --> 00:50:33.760 before the Babylonian conquest. 00:50:33.760 --> 00:50:35.680 You can find this in Scripture. 00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:38.560 You can for instance find it in Isaiah thirty six. 00:50:38.560 --> 00:50:42.800 Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. 00:50:42.800 --> 00:50:45.600 Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the 00:50:45.600 --> 00:50:48.400 hearing of the people who are on the wall. 00:50:48.400 --> 00:50:51.760 Here you see that those who are part of the court already 00:50:51.760 --> 00:50:57.200 understand Aramaic, and this is in fact not quite 200, 150 or 00:50:57.200 --> 00:50:57.520 so years 00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:01.520 before the Babylonian exile. 00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:07.760 Already you have the learned class in the Southern Kingdom speaking Aramaic, 00:51:07.760 --> 00:51:11.360 at least understanding Aramaic and being able to converse in it. 00:51:11.360 --> 00:51:16.320 Now, of course, at this point historically, the Northern Kingdom had already 00:51:16.320 --> 00:51:20.480 been taken into captivity, taken into exile, essentially destroyed, or in the 00:51:20.480 --> 00:51:22.240 process of being destroyed. 00:51:22.240 --> 00:51:23.680 By the Assyrians. 00:51:23.680 --> 00:51:28.400 And so you see Aramaic spreading partly into the southern kingdom via 00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:32.400 the northern kingdom because the northern kingdom was already being influenced by 00:51:32.400 --> 00:51:36.240 the language of the empire that had conquered them. 00:51:36.400 --> 00:51:40.880 But as I said, this is essentially the beginning of the end 00:51:40.880 --> 00:51:42.480 for Hebrew. 00:51:42.480 --> 00:51:45.200 And in the case of Hebrew, which is the case for a 00:51:45.200 --> 00:51:49.120 number of languages, but specifically Hebrew is our concern here, how you 00:51:49.120 --> 00:51:54.080 see this decay taking place, this replacement, is that the language of 00:51:54.080 --> 00:52:00.480 the everyday becomes something other than Hebrew, generally Aramaic and then later 00:52:00.480 --> 00:52:06.400 on Greek, but Hebrew sticks around for a while as the language 00:52:06.400 --> 00:52:07.920 of liturgy. 00:52:07.920 --> 00:52:10.560 In some cases there's a little bit of it used as the 00:52:10.560 --> 00:52:13.760 language of government, but even there it starts to get replaced because 00:52:14.160 --> 00:52:16.720 if you're dealing with an empire you speak their language. 00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:21.440 So it gets replaced by Aramaic as the language of government. 00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:26.240 But it is retained to some degree as the language of religious 00:52:26.240 --> 00:52:30.240 usage. And so that is where you can see some snippets of 00:52:30.240 --> 00:52:35.760 Hebrew, as it were, being retained long after Hebrew is no longer 00:52:35.760 --> 00:52:36.880 in use. 00:52:36.880 --> 00:52:40.960 It is a dead language by the time of Christ. 00:52:40.960 --> 00:52:44.080 It has been a dead language for a while. 00:52:44.080 --> 00:52:47.120 By the time it is revived in the twentieth century, it has 00:52:47.120 --> 00:52:50.160 been dead for over two thousand years. 00:52:50.160 --> 00:52:55.360 This is distinct from some of you will be thinking of Latin. 00:52:55.360 --> 00:52:59.200 Latin does not die in the same way that Hebrew does, because 00:52:59.200 --> 00:53:04.320 there has never been a point, really, since the rise of Latin, 00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:07.200 where we have not had those who knew Latin. 00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:09.760 We have always had Latin speakers 00:53:10.800 --> 00:53:14.400 even when we had far more obviously those who could read and 00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:17.840 write Latin, because usually it's not used as a spoken language except 00:53:17.840 --> 00:53:20.960 as a language of liturgy, notably historically. 00:53:22.160 --> 00:53:27.280 Hebrew dies much more thoroughly than Latin. 00:53:27.280 --> 00:53:32.880 God is rendering his judgment on Hebrew and on the wicked Old 00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:36.960 Testament nation of Israel, when he destroys Hebrew. 00:53:36.960 --> 00:53:39.680 It is part of the fulfillment of prophecy. 00:53:39.680 --> 00:53:45.280 It is the destruction of that wicked nation for their apostasy. 00:53:45.280 --> 00:53:46.240 It's one of the reasons 00:53:47.120 --> 00:53:51.760 that modern Hebrew was revived in order to try to ignore those 00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:55.840 prophecies, to try to ignore God's fulfillment of them. 00:53:55.840 --> 00:53:58.320 Particularly because if you look at the way in which they were 00:53:58.320 --> 00:54:02.560 fulfilled, not least of all in AD seventy when Jerusalem is again 00:54:02.560 --> 00:54:09.840 destroyed. That is God putting his seal on Christ, 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:14.160 on Christ's ministry, on what Christ said during his time on earth, 00:54:14.160 --> 00:54:17.200 because of course he prophesied that this would take place. 00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:22.640 And it's also the final note, the end of Old Testament Israel 00:54:22.720 --> 00:54:24.640 is the destruction of the temple in eighty seven. 00:54:24.880 --> 00:54:28.080 seventy Hebrews already gone. 00:54:28.080 --> 00:54:31.120 Their culture is basically replaced by foreigners. 00:54:31.120 --> 00:54:34.880 In the case of the Northern Kingdom, they have been literally physically 00:54:34.880 --> 00:54:37.760 replaced by foreigners, they become the Samaritans. 00:54:37.760 --> 00:54:41.840 Now they're cousins to the people they once were. 00:54:41.840 --> 00:54:46.320 The destruction of the temple is that final note on it. 00:54:46.320 --> 00:54:50.000 But we can't lose sight of the fact that God destroyed the 00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:51.440 Hebrew language. 00:54:51.440 --> 00:54:55.040 It is part of the fulfillment of the prophecies in Scripture, and 00:54:55.040 --> 00:54:59.280 it is part of His judgment on that nation. 00:54:59.280 --> 00:55:03.280 But He preserved His Word in the Greek, because that is what 00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:08.400 fulfills His promise not to let his word disappear from the earth. 00:55:08.400 --> 00:55:10.640 He has promised that he will preserve it. 00:55:10.640 --> 00:55:13.040 It doesn't mean you can't lose it in a wall for a 00:55:13.040 --> 00:55:16.320 time, but it does mean that it will be preserved. 00:55:16.320 --> 00:55:20.800 In our case, it is preserved in Greek, which is a proper, 00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:24.240 true, and full written language, and so we can simply pick it 00:55:24.240 --> 00:55:27.520 up, assuming you learn Greek, and read it. 00:55:27.520 --> 00:55:30.640 That is not the case again, as was the point was made 00:55:30.640 --> 00:55:35.600 earlier, as with Hebrew, because with Hebrew you cannot simply pick up 00:55:35.600 --> 00:55:40.080 the written form, the objad, and understand it. 00:55:40.080 --> 00:55:41.040 Not fully. 00:55:41.040 --> 00:55:45.760 Because you don't have that required divinely inspired oral tradition that comes 00:55:45.760 --> 00:55:50.960 alongside it to interpret what portion of it you have written. 00:55:50.960 --> 00:55:55.760 That was destroyed once and for all, with the destruction of the 00:55:55.760 --> 00:55:57.840 temple, it is gone. 00:55:57.840 --> 00:56:02.160 And so even if you had that Hebrew, you would not be 00:56:02.160 --> 00:56:06.560 able to use it as a divinely inspired text, because you are 00:56:06.560 --> 00:56:13.440 missing the absolutely necessary, divinely inspired and maintained oral tradition that you 00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:15.120 need to interpret it. 00:56:15.120 --> 00:56:20.160 So even if we found the old Hebrew, which we won't, it's 00:56:20.160 --> 00:56:23.520 gone. We're not going to find scrolls somewhere in a cave. 00:56:23.520 --> 00:56:26.640 But even if we did, say in the hypothetical world in which 00:56:26.640 --> 00:56:30.720 that happens, we find some new cave somewhere near the Dead Sea 00:56:31.040 --> 00:56:36.160 that has a really old form of Hebrew, a full, complete version 00:56:36.160 --> 00:56:38.000 of the Hebrew. 00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:42.480 In ancient Hebrew, in biblical Hebrew, it would still not be the 00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:46.800 divinely inspired word of God, because he rendered his judgment on the 00:56:46.800 --> 00:56:51.440 temple, he rendered his judgment on the Old Testament nation of Israel, 00:56:51.440 --> 00:56:53.680 and destroyed their oral tradition. 00:56:53.680 --> 00:56:58.080 And so the Hebrew is not the divinely inspired Word of God, 00:56:58.080 --> 00:57:02.320 the Greek is, because God replaced the Hebrew with the Greek so 00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:05.920 that his word would be transmitted forward in a way that could 00:57:05.920 --> 00:57:09.280 not be lost in the same way as the Hebrew, and as 00:57:09.280 --> 00:57:13.760 a fulfillment of Noah's prophecy with regard to Japheth dwelling in the 00:57:13.760 --> 00:57:18.400 tents of Shem, because this is what we see with the destruction 00:57:18.400 --> 00:57:24.480 of Hebrew and the movement toward Greek is God fulfilling that prophecy 00:57:24.480 --> 00:57:25.600 of Noah. 00:57:25.600 --> 00:57:28.400 We see him taking the word of God to the nations, and 00:57:28.400 --> 00:57:31.280 the way that he does that is with the Greek. 00:57:31.280 --> 00:57:33.760 But in order to look at that we have to look at 00:57:33.760 --> 00:57:38.960 how Greek came to be, the dominant language, in this region. 00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:44.320 Because it was Aramaic that replaced Hebrew and a number of Canaanite 00:57:44.320 --> 00:57:48.160 languages in the region, but after that it was Greek that replaced 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:50.800 Aramaic. 00:57:50.720 --> 00:57:51.040 I 00:57:51.040 --> 00:57:55.760 just want to emphasize the complete judgment and destruction under which Israel 00:57:55.760 --> 00:57:59.200 fell leading up to Christ's birth. 00:57:59.200 --> 00:58:02.560 Because when you look at it, I mean, just reading the Old 00:58:02.560 --> 00:58:08.240 Testament, you see prophet after prophet, sent by God to warn these 00:58:08.240 --> 00:58:12.160 people, to condemn these people, to lament their faithlessness. 00:58:12.160 --> 00:58:15.600 And you see exactly what he permitted to be done to them. 00:58:15.600 --> 00:58:18.640 And the prophecies in Daniel are key for 00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:23.600 laying out the completeness of this destruction. 00:58:23.600 --> 00:58:28.080 It begins in Babylon, where they lose their land, they lose their 00:58:28.080 --> 00:58:30.320 rulers, there are no more Jewish kings. 00:58:30.560 --> 00:58:34.880 They are ruled by foreigners, they're sent everywhere, their land is no 00:58:34.880 --> 00:58:36.080 longer their own. 00:58:36.080 --> 00:58:39.600 And then, as Corey just detailed, then they lose their alphabet. 00:58:39.600 --> 00:58:43.920 Even if they were still speaking some form of proto-Hebrew, they switched 00:58:43.920 --> 00:58:49.200 over to the Aramaic script to preserve the ancient Hebrew language that 00:58:49.200 --> 00:58:52.000 they had for scriptural purposes. 00:58:52.000 --> 00:58:54.960 But everything else, like the alphabet was gone. 00:58:54.960 --> 00:58:59.120 And then over time, they lost the language entirely. 00:58:59.120 --> 00:59:03.760 So they had the scripture prior to Greek. 00:59:03.760 --> 00:59:06.240 In some cases it was it may have been preserved in Hebrew, 00:59:06.240 --> 00:59:08.720 it may have been translated into Aramaic. 00:59:08.720 --> 00:59:12.880 Whatever happened, they had nothing left of their own. 00:59:12.880 --> 00:59:18.000 There was no going concern for the Hebrew language, except liturgically. 00:59:18.000 --> 00:59:22.160 And what replaced it is what Daniel prophesied. 00:59:22.160 --> 00:59:26.720 The prophecies detailed the kingdom of Babylon and then Media and Persia, 00:59:26.720 --> 00:59:31.200 and then the Hellenistic kingdoms, which after Alexander the Great's death split 00:59:31.200 --> 00:59:35.520 into four as Daniel prophesied, and that is how we end up 00:59:35.520 --> 00:59:37.120 in the situation where the Septuagint 00:59:38.160 --> 00:59:39.680 is necessary. 00:59:39.680 --> 00:59:44.560 And what's interesting when looking at the moment when the Septuagint was 00:59:44.560 --> 00:59:49.600 first created, it was not an Israelite who said, hey, we should 00:59:49.600 --> 00:59:49.840 do this. 00:59:49.840 --> 00:59:52.000 It wasn't a Hebrew, it wasn't a Jew. 00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:57.920 It was Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who was one of the Greek rulers 00:59:57.920 --> 00:59:59.200 of Egypt. 00:59:59.200 --> 01:00:02.640 And this is one of those cases where if you're a twenty 01:00:02.720 --> 01:00:06.240 first century idiot and you hear Egypt, you think, oh wow, that's 01:00:06.240 --> 01:00:09.600 African. Those Egyptians are just like all the other pharaohs. 01:00:09.600 --> 01:00:12.320 They're these dark brown people just like you see today. 01:00:12.320 --> 01:00:15.040 No. Tell me II was Greek. 01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:18.320 He was descended from one of the generals of Alexander the Great. 01:00:18.320 --> 01:00:22.400 When the kingdom, the Hellenistic Kingdom was broken up, that's what happened, 01:00:22.400 --> 01:00:24.160 as Daniel prophesied. 01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:30.080 So year Ptolemy, which was hearkening back to a previous Egyptian ruler, 01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:31.200 but he was a Greek king. 01:00:31.200 --> 01:00:35.120 He was a Greek king in Egypt, which was a Greek kingdom. 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:37.680 Egypt was one of the Greek kingdoms, and that didn't go away 01:00:37.680 --> 01:00:42.320 until the death of Cleopatra a few hundred years later So this 01:00:42.320 --> 01:00:45.360 is a time where the land is long gone, the kings are 01:00:45.360 --> 01:00:46.160 long gone. 01:00:46.160 --> 01:00:48.160 But for a time they had the alphabet and they had the 01:00:48.160 --> 01:00:52.400 language, then they lost the alphabet to Babylonian Aramaic, and then they 01:00:52.400 --> 01:00:54.240 lost the language entirely. 01:00:54.240 --> 01:01:01.680 And although it was Ptolemy II who decreed that the probably 01:01:01.680 --> 01:01:06.160 initially just the first five books were translated into Greek, eventually everything 01:01:06.160 --> 01:01:07.920 was translated into Greek. 01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:11.600 And that became what we know as the Septuagint today. 01:01:11.600 --> 01:01:15.760 So we'll talk a little bit about the moment of its translation. 01:01:15.760 --> 01:01:17.920 But one of the things I want to emphasize is we go 01:01:17.920 --> 01:01:20.640 through the particular The particular details, because you've probably heard bits and 01:01:20.640 --> 01:01:21.600 pieces before. 01:01:21.600 --> 01:01:24.960 Some of you have probably heard of the letter of Aristius, which 01:01:24.960 --> 01:01:29.840 is where the name Septuagint comes from, or LXX, which is Roman 01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:32.240 numerals, ironically, for 70. 01:01:32.240 --> 01:01:35.920 So seventy and 72 are used interchangeably. 01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:38.560 These Middle Eastern people were kind of sloppy about numbers. 01:01:38.560 --> 01:01:39.840 It drives me insane. 01:01:39.840 --> 01:01:42.960 But when we find these sort of inconsistencies, it's not because there's 01:01:42.880 --> 01:01:46.320 a lie, but it's because they handle numbers differently sometimes. 01:01:46.320 --> 01:01:50.960 I would personally never speak that imprecisely, but it was normal. 01:01:51.120 --> 01:01:56.560 So the seventy-two translators that are detailed in the letter of Aristius 01:01:56.560 --> 01:01:58.160 as having been sent 01:01:59.120 --> 01:02:05.120 by the Jews to Ptolemy II to translate their scripture into Greek 01:02:05.440 --> 01:02:07.360 at the king's request. 01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:11.360 The letter records that this happened and records it as being miraculous. 01:02:11.360 --> 01:02:14.160 What is important about the letter is not that it makes the 01:02:14.160 --> 01:02:20.000 claims, but that it's actually a contemporaneous record of anything happening. 01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:23.600 It's miraculous that we even have a written record that old that 01:02:23.600 --> 01:02:25.840 records any events happening. 01:02:25.840 --> 01:02:28.640 Even like the letter of Aristius is not inspired. 01:02:28.640 --> 01:02:31.840 There were political motivations surrounding it. 01:02:31.840 --> 01:02:34.080 One of the key points that you need to remember about the 01:02:34.080 --> 01:02:38.160 letter of Aristius, because whenever you talk to someone who doesn't know 01:02:38.160 --> 01:02:41.280 what we've said here, and you talk to them about the translation 01:02:41.280 --> 01:02:45.120 of the Septuagint and the reception of the Septuagint by the early 01:02:45.120 --> 01:02:48.240 church, by Jesus, by the Apostles. 01:02:48.240 --> 01:02:51.680 Anyone who argues against what we're saying here is going to try 01:02:51.680 --> 01:02:54.560 to pinch and hole on this letter. 01:02:54.560 --> 01:02:59.280 This letter to Aristius that makes the claim that there were 72 01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:03.840 rabbis who translated the scripture and all their translations matched. 01:03:03.840 --> 01:03:07.920 It was received as a miracle, everyone celebrated, and that became at 01:03:07.920 --> 01:03:12.240 least the first five books of what later became the complete subdugent. 01:03:12.240 --> 01:03:14.000 That is not why we care. 01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:16.000 There will be people who will lie and say that that's the 01:03:16.000 --> 01:03:17.600 entire basis. 01:03:17.600 --> 01:03:21.280 Some ancient fiction, some forgery of a letter is the only reason 01:03:21.280 --> 01:03:23.760 to talk about the septuagent at all. 01:03:23.760 --> 01:03:28.240 Jesus and the apostles in the early church received the Septuagint. 01:03:28.240 --> 01:03:31.280 The fact that just like we have Josephus, who was not a 01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:35.440 Christian, but he was a contemporaneous witness in the first century AD, 01:03:35.440 --> 01:03:38.640 we have a contemporaneous witness a couple hundred years earlier, at least 01:03:38.640 --> 01:03:42.160 a hundred or so years earlier, attesting to the fact that these 01:03:42.160 --> 01:03:44.080 events had taken place. 01:03:44.080 --> 01:03:48.720 We're not getting the notion that the Septuagint is inspired by God 01:03:48.960 --> 01:03:51.440 because Aristius recorded it. 01:03:51.440 --> 01:03:53.040 But what they record 01:03:53.920 --> 01:03:58.480 was not what correct to Jesus into quoting the Septuagint. 01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:00.240 So please track with me. 01:04:00.240 --> 01:04:04.000 Jesus, the apostles, quote the Septuagint throughout scripture. 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:06.400 That's going to be the fourth episode of this series. 01:04:06.400 --> 01:04:09.120 We're not going to get into all those details today because it 01:04:09.120 --> 01:04:12.880 fills an entire episode of how much of the Septuagint is quoted 01:04:12.880 --> 01:04:15.040 by Jesus and the apostles. 01:04:15.040 --> 01:04:17.920 For you to pigeonhole on the letter of Aristius and say, well, 01:04:17.920 --> 01:04:21.120 it's an apocryphal letter, it's a forgery, blah, blah, blah. 01:04:21.120 --> 01:04:26.400 That argument hinges on Jesus having been tricked by this letter, that 01:04:26.400 --> 01:04:31.200 Paul was tricked, that Peter was tricked, that they were somehow misled. 01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:34.320 I we should have been using Hebrew all along, but we didn't 01:04:34.320 --> 01:04:37.840 because we were tricked by this letter that said it was inspired. 01:04:37.840 --> 01:04:41.840 That's so backwards that when you examine the facts of the matter, 01:04:41.840 --> 01:04:44.800 I I don't know how anyone could possibly say that and not 01:04:44.800 --> 01:04:48.640 either burst out laughing or burst into flames because it's so fundamentally 01:04:48.640 --> 01:04:53.680 dishonest. We're dropping a lot of names in moments in time that 01:04:53.920 --> 01:04:55.600 you can go look up for yourself. 01:04:55.600 --> 01:04:58.800 So we'll have some show notes, but this is really a very 01:04:58.800 --> 01:05:03.200 much a you need to go assemble these facts for yourself thing. 01:05:03.200 --> 01:05:06.320 When you read the letter of Aristius, you're gonna find varying it 01:05:06.320 --> 01:05:10.640 claims about it, but they're going to be trying to get you 01:05:10.640 --> 01:05:14.320 to believe that we're only talking about it because of that letter. 01:05:14.320 --> 01:05:16.080 I don't care about the letter. 01:05:16.080 --> 01:05:19.760 The only reason that we bring up the letter of Aristius, which 01:05:19.760 --> 01:05:23.280 otherwise would be trivia, is because people are going to say these 01:05:23.280 --> 01:05:24.720 silly things. 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:27.440 Jesus and the apostles believed that it was scripture. 01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:28.880 They said it was scripture. 01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:31.440 You can forget the Old Testament entirely for the sake of this 01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:32.720 momentary argument. 01:05:32.720 --> 01:05:37.360 The New Testament itself, in Second Timothy, that book only quotes a 01:05:37.360 --> 01:05:41.120 Septuagint when it says that all scripture is breathed out by God. 01:05:41.120 --> 01:05:44.480 Paul was talking about the Septuagint when he made that claim. 01:05:44.480 --> 01:05:49.520 And crucibly, the quotes in the New Testament of the Septuagint are 01:05:49.520 --> 01:05:51.680 not just of the first five books. 01:05:51.680 --> 01:05:55.840 When they treat the Greek scripture as scripture as God breathed, they 01:05:55.840 --> 01:05:57.600 treat every book that they quote. 01:05:57.600 --> 01:06:01.120 They almost exclusively quote Greek, it's from everywhere. 01:06:01.120 --> 01:06:03.040 It's not just the first five books. 01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:05.520 And they treat it as though it's inspired. 01:06:05.520 --> 01:06:08.640 That is the basis of our argument for saying it's inspired. 01:06:08.640 --> 01:06:12.240 Because I believe the New Testament, I must believe the Greek Old 01:06:12.240 --> 01:06:14.480 Testament. There's no way around it. 01:06:14.480 --> 01:06:17.040 In this context, the letter of Aristius is trivia. 01:06:17.040 --> 01:06:22.080 It's neat that there's this contemporaneous witness, but it's not the basis 01:06:22.080 --> 01:06:23.280 of anything. 01:06:23.280 --> 01:06:27.760 It's neat, it's interesting, it doesn't matter, but it's sitting there is 01:06:27.760 --> 01:06:32.240 a way for people to get their heads twisted because all of 01:06:32.240 --> 01:06:36.800 Christian history, right up through Reddit in the twenty first century, is 01:06:36.800 --> 01:06:41.200 about people mocking and belittling and trying to needle at whatever small 01:06:41.200 --> 01:06:44.000 detail they can find to undermine people's faith. 01:06:44.320 --> 01:06:47.760 That's why at the beginning we emphasize this is not about undermining 01:06:47.760 --> 01:06:50.000 faith, this is about bolstering it. 01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:52.560 You don't need to lose heart that the Bible that you've read 01:06:52.560 --> 01:06:54.560 in the past is based on the Masoretic. 01:06:54.560 --> 01:06:58.320 You should rejoice that the version that Jesus and the apostles use 01:06:58.480 --> 01:07:01.600 is still preserved today, only in Greek, but we can get it 01:07:01.600 --> 01:07:02.240 into English. 01:07:02.240 --> 01:07:05.120 That's something that'll be, as we said, that'll happen somewhere else in 01:07:05.120 --> 01:07:07.760 the future, but it's entirely doable. 01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:10.720 It literally just takes someone deciding, yeah, this is an important thing 01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:11.520 to do. 01:07:11.520 --> 01:07:14.960 We never should have abandoned it, but here we are. 01:07:14.960 --> 01:07:18.640 Don't let anybody bog you down on the details of the second 01:07:18.800 --> 01:07:24.160 and third century BC, where these moments of change happened. 01:07:24.160 --> 01:07:29.440 No, the Hebrew was exterminated by God's hand and by his permission, 01:07:29.440 --> 01:07:33.760 and in essence by his prophecy, leaving the Jews with what? 01:07:33.760 --> 01:07:38.480 They still had the word in Greek exclusively, and they had their 01:07:38.720 --> 01:07:42.960 traditions. They still had the temple, which as Cory spoiled, gets destroyed 01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:43.840 not long after. 01:07:43.840 --> 01:07:47.120 In eighty seventy when the temple was destroyed, that was the end 01:07:47.120 --> 01:07:48.240 of this period. 01:07:48.240 --> 01:07:52.560 But But from Jesus' birth for the entire first century, the only 01:07:52.560 --> 01:07:54.480 scripture they used was Greek. 01:07:54.480 --> 01:07:59.280 And that's one of the crucial lies that everyone doesn't understand today. 01:07:59.280 --> 01:08:03.760 The reason that almost all the New Testament quotations are of Greek 01:08:03.920 --> 01:08:05.600 is that that was the Bible. 01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:07.200 It wasn't a fluke. 01:08:07.200 --> 01:08:11.360 Matthew was not written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek. 01:08:11.360 --> 01:08:13.520 Matthew quotes the Septuagint. 01:08:13.520 --> 01:08:14.880 All the books do. 01:08:14.880 --> 01:08:18.560 And there are a couple places where they do exclusively quote a 01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:22.960 Hebrew forelog or previous version, a prototype. 01:08:22.960 --> 01:08:23.920 That's fine. 01:08:23.920 --> 01:08:24.560 You know what? 01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:28.000 They as Corey said, Latin for a long time, even in some 01:08:28.080 --> 01:08:32.000 cases up to this day, is preserved as a liturgical language. 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:36.400 It's entirely believable that in fact we know for a fact that 01:08:36.400 --> 01:08:40.240 Hebrew was preserved as a liturgical language in the temple and in 01:08:40.240 --> 01:08:41.360 the synagogues. 01:08:41.360 --> 01:08:45.360 We also know that they had people translating into Aramaic and Greek 01:08:45.360 --> 01:08:49.200 right there to explain it because people couldn't understand most of it. 01:08:49.200 --> 01:08:52.800 My personal hypothesis, and this is speculation, but I think it makes 01:08:52.800 --> 01:08:55.840 perfect sense when in the fourth episode we show you how few 01:08:56.800 --> 01:09:02.240 quotations exclusively match the Hebrew, my hypothesis is that it makes sense 01:09:02.240 --> 01:09:05.920 that those quotations would have been in common liturgical use, such as 01:09:05.920 --> 01:09:10.480 when they were quoted in Greek of a Hebrew version, it's something 01:09:10.480 --> 01:09:12.640 that would have been familiar to many of the people at that 01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:16.320 day. So it would have been perfectly reasonable for Paul and the 01:09:16.320 --> 01:09:19.520 other authors to quote the Septuagint there as well. 01:09:19.520 --> 01:09:22.640 It doesn't harm our point that they don't, because there was liturgical 01:09:23.280 --> 01:09:26.160 use. Liturgy is the last thing to go. 01:09:26.160 --> 01:09:27.520 That's tradition. 01:09:27.520 --> 01:09:32.160 It's why today post Vatican II, the Latin Rite churches are fighting 01:09:32.160 --> 01:09:34.640 a rearguard action against the Vatican itself. 01:09:34.640 --> 01:09:36.480 They're trying to take away Latin. 01:09:36.480 --> 01:09:40.080 Now, as a Lutheran, I think that that matter was settled during 01:09:40.080 --> 01:09:41.040 the Reformation. 01:09:41.040 --> 01:09:43.840 I think that right here is we're looking at the loss of 01:09:43.840 --> 01:09:46.080 Hebrew and the replacement with Greek. 01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:48.240 And it is replacement. 01:09:48.240 --> 01:09:50.960 I think that that's an example that God is fine with it. 01:09:50.960 --> 01:09:54.640 God wants the language of the people in church to be the 01:09:54.640 --> 01:09:59.920 vernacular. Crucially, the Greek that was used in the New Testament is 01:09:59.920 --> 01:10:02.480 not the much more sophisticated Attic Greek. 01:10:02.480 --> 01:10:04.080 It's Koine Greek. 01:10:04.080 --> 01:10:07.360 It's kind of effectively hillbilly Greek, sort of. 01:10:07.360 --> 01:10:10.240 It's kind of like French Canadians. 01:10:10.240 --> 01:10:13.920 The version of French that they speak, French speakers die when they 01:10:13.920 --> 01:10:14.320 hear it. 01:10:14.320 --> 01:10:15.680 They think it's awful. 01:10:15.680 --> 01:10:18.960 It's a derivation, but it's still from the same family. 01:10:18.960 --> 01:10:21.600 It's closely related, but it's dumbed down. 01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:23.360 Because it was lingua franca. 01:10:23.360 --> 01:10:27.760 Just as previously under Babylon, under their rule, Aramaic was the lingua 01:10:27.840 --> 01:10:31.440 franca of a great empire, it was slowly went away and was 01:10:31.440 --> 01:10:34.800 replaced by Greek, and that slowly went away as was replaced by 01:10:34.800 --> 01:10:38.480 Latin. And today's Cory point out, English is kind of the lingua 01:10:38.480 --> 01:10:42.560 franca. Anyone in the world who wants to participate in commerce, English 01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:45.440 is probably the first language they're gonna look at, unless they just 01:10:45.440 --> 01:10:47.440 want to trade with a neighbor next door. 01:10:47.440 --> 01:10:50.240 But even sometimes English might be their only common language. 01:10:50.800 --> 01:10:53.520 So there's nothing weird about that happening. 01:10:53.520 --> 01:10:56.640 And the fact that God permitted it to happen to Hebrew is 01:10:56.640 --> 01:10:57.520 a crucial point. 01:10:57.520 --> 01:10:58.640 He didn't preserve it. 01:10:58.640 --> 01:11:00.640 He did not preserve Hebrew. 01:11:00.640 --> 01:11:04.320 And when we get to the first and second century AD, we 01:11:04.320 --> 01:11:06.320 find that no one thought otherwise. 01:11:06.320 --> 01:11:10.480 Jesus and the apostles and the early church were not using Hebrew. 01:11:10.480 --> 01:11:15.760 And crucially, even if you don't believe our claims that are demonstrable 01:11:15.760 --> 01:11:18.960 from scripture and from history that Hebrew was dead except for a 01:11:18.960 --> 01:11:20.720 bit of liturgical use. 01:11:20.720 --> 01:11:24.080 There's absolutely no command in Scripture to stop using the Greek that 01:11:24.080 --> 01:11:27.760 they themselves were using to go back to some older version. 01:11:27.760 --> 01:11:32.960 When we see Hebrew start to be pushed is only after the 01:11:32.960 --> 01:11:34.720 second temple is destroyed. 01:11:34.720 --> 01:11:40.320 When the temple is destroyed again, by God's hand, by his permission, 01:11:40.320 --> 01:11:42.960 that is the beginning of the period where the Jews who at 01:11:42.960 --> 01:11:44.960 this point are the murderers of Christ. 01:11:44.960 --> 01:11:47.200 They're no longer God's people. 01:11:47.200 --> 01:11:51.680 They have rejected God entirely, as scripture makes abundantly clear. 01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:55.600 We did an episode last year called The Required Confession, where we 01:11:55.600 --> 01:11:59.280 went through an exhaustive detail all the places where the New Testament 01:11:59.280 --> 01:12:02.320 directly says that the Jews murdered Christ. 01:12:02.320 --> 01:12:06.080 As we're recording this, it's right after Easter where those homilies were 01:12:06.080 --> 01:12:11.840 being shared and as always there's so called controversy around saying what 01:12:11.840 --> 01:12:15.440 the Bible says about the Jews murdering Christ. 01:12:15.440 --> 01:12:18.000 It is a fact, just as it is a fact that my 01:12:18.000 --> 01:12:19.680 sins and your sins killed Christ. 01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:21.920 All those things are in Scripture. 01:12:21.920 --> 01:12:24.800 And the most important thing is that my sins killed Christ, as 01:12:24.800 --> 01:12:25.600 did yours. 01:12:25.600 --> 01:12:27.440 That's the most important thing. 01:12:27.440 --> 01:12:30.320 But when the whole world says you can't say that the Jews 01:12:30.320 --> 01:12:31.920 murdered Christ, then we have a problem. 01:12:31.920 --> 01:12:34.000 Because Scripture also says that. 01:12:34.000 --> 01:12:39.200 So in the required confession episode, we detail precisely what a dire 01:12:39.440 --> 01:12:43.440 situation we're in today, in this century, in this year, and next 01:12:43.440 --> 01:12:46.720 year it'll be even worse, where laws are being passed saying you 01:12:46.720 --> 01:12:48.560 can't say the Jews murdered Christ. 01:12:48.560 --> 01:12:52.480 When When the Jews murdered Christ and then God destroyed the temple 01:12:52.640 --> 01:12:57.040 and left that place forever, all this was wiped away. 01:12:57.040 --> 01:12:58.560 And they had no Hebrew left. 01:12:58.560 --> 01:12:59.520 They had nothing. 01:12:59.520 --> 01:13:02.960 And the church went on as though it never existed. 01:13:02.960 --> 01:13:07.040 In effect, not that it hadn't existed historically, but there was nothing 01:13:07.040 --> 01:13:13.520 received from the moment that the Septuagint initially was translated in Egypt 01:13:13.600 --> 01:13:16.560 and then it went back to the Jews and it was spread 01:13:16.880 --> 01:13:18.480 elsewhere because they were thrilled. 01:13:18.480 --> 01:13:22.720 When it got back to the men who sent those precious scrolls 01:13:23.040 --> 01:13:27.760 off to be translated, because it all occurred in one place initially, 01:13:27.760 --> 01:13:28.880 they were thrilled with it. 01:13:28.880 --> 01:13:29.760 They were thankful. 01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:32.320 And it was a big deal because even in around two fifty 01:13:32.320 --> 01:13:37.280 BC, Greek was sufficiently dominant, and Aramaic was starting to fade away, 01:13:37.280 --> 01:13:41.920 and Hebrew was mostly gone, even liturgically, that they needed it in 01:13:41.920 --> 01:13:45.120 Greek. It was a benefit to them that this had happened. 01:13:45.120 --> 01:13:48.640 And then two and three centuries later, it was paramount. 01:13:48.640 --> 01:13:54.560 The gospel could not have spread without Roman roads and Greek scripture. 01:13:54.560 --> 01:13:57.200 That's the reason it was able to spread so far and so 01:13:57.200 --> 01:14:00.640 fast. If it had been sequestered in Hebrew, it never would have 01:14:00.640 --> 01:14:01.760 gone anywhere. 01:14:01.760 --> 01:14:03.520 God knew what he was doing here. 01:14:03.600 --> 01:14:07.920 God did not simply destroy Hebrew as a language in those people 01:14:08.400 --> 01:14:11.280 to prove a point, although it was his wrath and it was 01:14:11.280 --> 01:14:15.200 his justice, but crucially moving it into the vernacular of the day 01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:19.200 which was Greek, and then later later became Latin, was necessary for 01:14:19.200 --> 01:14:23.200 spreading the gospel to the nations, just as God had prophesied and 01:14:23.200 --> 01:14:26.560 just as he commanded. 01:14:26.960 --> 01:14:27.120 As 01:14:27.120 --> 01:14:32.400 we've said before in other episodes, this is not a history podcast. 01:14:32.400 --> 01:14:36.800 And so we are not going to be exhaustive in terms of 01:14:37.120 --> 01:14:40.560 this happened on this date, and this man was born this year 01:14:40.640 --> 01:14:43.920 and died this year, and all of those things that you would 01:14:43.920 --> 01:14:48.240 expect from a history podcast or a history class or a history 01:14:48.240 --> 01:14:51.600 book. What we are doing is something different. 01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:57.760 We are laying out the overarching narrative, explaining why the why these 01:14:57.760 --> 01:15:03.600 things took place, what the consequences of these things are, and matters 01:15:03.600 --> 01:15:05.600 related to those things. 01:15:05.600 --> 01:15:08.320 And so it will fall to other men. 01:15:08.320 --> 01:15:10.320 In many cases, the work has already been done. 01:15:10.320 --> 01:15:13.680 Many books exist, but it will fall to other men to write 01:15:13.680 --> 01:15:17.280 the exhaustive histories of these things. 01:15:17.280 --> 01:15:19.040 That's not what we're attempting to do. 01:15:19.040 --> 01:15:23.520 We have zero interest in doing that Because quite frankly, it would 01:15:23.520 --> 01:15:26.640 not be a proper use of our time, and it would not 01:15:26.640 --> 01:15:29.920 be a proper use of your time when you are listening to 01:15:29.920 --> 01:15:31.280 this particular podcast. 01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:37.600 You are not coming here for just a rote history lesson However, 01:15:37.600 --> 01:15:42.240 that being said, some of the history is entirely necessary to know. 01:15:42.240 --> 01:15:46.560 That's why I gave dates for the Assyrian exile, the Babylonian exile, 01:15:46.560 --> 01:15:48.880 the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. 01:15:48.880 --> 01:15:53.200 There are certain things you have to know, certain waypoints, in order 01:15:53.200 --> 01:15:59.840 to orient yourself within time, how these things played out in time. 01:15:59.840 --> 01:16:01.200 One of the more important 01:16:02.480 --> 01:16:06.800 time periods, not specific year, although we could give a specific year, 01:16:06.800 --> 01:16:11.280 say for the death of Alexander the Great, to spoil what I'm 01:16:11.280 --> 01:16:16.720 saying next, as it were, is of course the Macedonian conquests, which 01:16:16.720 --> 01:16:20.320 is to say the conquests of Alexander the Great. 01:16:20.320 --> 01:16:24.560 That plays one of the most important roles in all of this 01:16:24.560 --> 01:16:31.520 history, because unlike basically anyone who came before him, one of the 01:16:31.520 --> 01:16:37.360 explicit goals of Alexander the Great was to spread Greek culture. 01:16:37.360 --> 01:16:42.080 Previous empires typically conquered foreign peoples and simply ruled them. 01:16:42.080 --> 01:16:48.480 Sometimes you would have a subsidiary ruler that would basically maintain the 01:16:48.480 --> 01:16:51.840 nation as it had been before the conquest, but now paying tithes 01:16:52.480 --> 01:16:54.800 to the conquering empire. 01:16:54.800 --> 01:17:02.160 Essentially they didn't really try to change the conquered peoples culturally, 01:17:02.160 --> 01:17:04.880 anything like that, except for of course the Assyrians did it in 01:17:04.880 --> 01:17:08.400 order to destroy them to make them easier to rule. 01:17:08.400 --> 01:17:11.920 But what Alexander did is he set up Greek colonies. 01:17:11.920 --> 01:17:17.280 He took Greek traders, he took Greek speakers, Greek citizens, and he 01:17:17.280 --> 01:17:21.680 placed them in cities along the route of his conquest in order 01:17:21.680 --> 01:17:26.480 to spread Greek culture, in order to build up his empire as 01:17:26.480 --> 01:17:28.320 a Greek empire. 01:17:28.320 --> 01:17:33.120 Now with many different nations, many different races inside of that empire, 01:17:33.120 --> 01:17:36.880 but he wanted them all to have the same Greek culture. 01:17:36.880 --> 01:17:38.800 And he was very successful. 01:17:39.120 --> 01:17:42.880 of course he died young, and so some of that success that 01:17:42.880 --> 01:17:47.120 could have been did not occur because of his untimely or timely, 01:17:47.120 --> 01:17:51.280 depending how you look at it historically, death, but his empire upon 01:17:51.280 --> 01:17:56.400 his death was divided up among his generals, his diodoki as they 01:17:56.400 --> 01:17:57.760 are called. 01:17:57.760 --> 01:18:01.040 For our purposes they are not all relevant, because some of them 01:18:01.040 --> 01:18:05.520 ruled regions that aren't particularly relevant to what we are discussing here. 01:18:05.520 --> 01:18:09.360 There are, however, two dynasties that are particularly 01:18:10.240 --> 01:18:14.960 relevant. These, of course, would be the Ptolemaic Kingdom previously mentioned, which 01:18:14.960 --> 01:18:21.280 is to say Greek Egypt, and also the Seleucid Empire, which ruled 01:18:21.520 --> 01:18:23.120 essentially in the region 01:18:24.000 --> 01:18:24.320 of 01:18:25.280 --> 01:18:30.800 Palestine, not exactly Palestine, because there was some fighting between these two 01:18:30.800 --> 01:18:35.440 empires, these two kingdoms, over the region of Palestine. 01:18:35.440 --> 01:18:40.080 We'll just call it Palestine for the general region of Old Testament 01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:45.920 Israel. But these are the two powers in that region. 01:18:45.920 --> 01:18:52.320 Now notably, these are two Greek kingdoms, squabbling over various borders and 01:18:52.320 --> 01:18:56.720 such, but there's no fight over whether or not Greek will be 01:18:56.720 --> 01:18:58.080 predominant here. 01:18:58.080 --> 01:19:03.920 It's not a Greek speaking empire and an Aramaic speaking empire fighting 01:19:03.920 --> 01:19:08.720 over which culture will be dominant, it's which Greek group will dominate. 01:19:08.720 --> 01:19:13.520 And so Greek is in fact predominant in the entire region. 01:19:13.520 --> 01:19:16.960 These two kingdoms or empires, whatever you want to call them, they 01:19:16.960 --> 01:19:21.760 call themselves both at different times, are relevant because obviously they have 01:19:21.760 --> 01:19:25.920 the power in the region, but it is also the Ptolemaic kingdom, 01:19:25.920 --> 01:19:31.360 as was previously mentioned by Woe, the king of that kingdom, who 01:19:31.360 --> 01:19:35.040 causes Scripture to be translated into the Greek. 01:19:35.040 --> 01:19:38.080 Now of course it was ultimately God who caused this to happen 01:19:38.160 --> 01:19:41.920 to fulfill his promises with regard to preserving his Preserving his word, 01:19:41.920 --> 01:19:46.560 but it was in fact a Greek speaking king of Egypt who 01:19:46.560 --> 01:19:52.800 had the Old Testament in two eighty two BC translated into Greek. 01:19:52.800 --> 01:19:55.760 And the way that he did this is that he sent a 01:19:55.760 --> 01:20:01.520 letter to the temple in Jerusalem, obtained copies of the Old Testament, 01:20:01.520 --> 01:20:05.120 as they were held in the Hebrew at the time in the 01:20:05.120 --> 01:20:10.480 temple, and also the seventy-two scholars in order to have this translated, 01:20:10.480 --> 01:20:13.520 because you need those who can actually read the language, both languages 01:20:13.600 --> 01:20:17.680 notably, because they had to obviously know the original language and the 01:20:17.680 --> 01:20:20.480 target language, both Hebrew and Greek. 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:27.520 They were taken to the capital, unsurprisingly named Alexandria, and then they 01:20:27.520 --> 01:20:31.120 proceeded to do the translation work. 01:20:31.120 --> 01:20:34.800 The initial translation, as Wo said, was of the Pentateuch, the first 01:20:34.800 --> 01:20:38.080 five books, but then over a number of years after that, because 01:20:38.080 --> 01:20:42.240 the original initial translation work was completed quite quickly. 01:20:42.240 --> 01:20:45.280 But then the translation of the rest of the Old Testament took 01:20:45.840 --> 01:20:47.840 some number of years after that. 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:53.200 But this translation was completed, and then it was received by everyone 01:20:53.200 --> 01:20:55.440 as the Word of God. 01:20:55.440 --> 01:20:59.200 This is what was used in synagogues because bear in mind, again, 01:20:59.200 --> 01:21:01.920 they no longer used Hebrew. 01:21:01.920 --> 01:21:07.520 An Aramaic was giving way to Greek because Alexander had conquered the 01:21:07.520 --> 01:21:11.040 region and built up Greek culture, and as some historians and others 01:21:11.040 --> 01:21:16.080 have described this, this was the fastest spread of a culture and 01:21:16.080 --> 01:21:20.640 the deepest entrenchment of a culture in all of human history. 01:21:20.640 --> 01:21:22.960 Nothing else compares to it. 01:21:22.960 --> 01:21:25.760 This entire area was Hellenized. 01:21:25.760 --> 01:21:29.520 In fact, it is Hellenized to the point where many of the 01:21:29.520 --> 01:21:34.720 people, who were not in fact genetically, not ethnically Greek, were still 01:21:34.720 --> 01:21:36.160 called Hellen. 01:21:36.160 --> 01:21:40.400 They were called Greeks because they were so thoroughly acculturated, they were 01:21:40.400 --> 01:21:42.720 so thoroughly Greek culturally. 01:21:42.720 --> 01:21:45.280 We see this in the pages of scripture. 01:21:45.280 --> 01:21:49.680 We see the woman whom we are told is a Syrophoenician, which 01:21:49.680 --> 01:21:53.040 is indeed not a Greek Not a Greek, but she is called 01:21:53.040 --> 01:21:56.560 a Hellene, because she is both of those things. 01:21:56.560 --> 01:22:01.920 She is a Syrophoenician racially, but she is a Greek culturally, because 01:22:01.920 --> 01:22:06.400 of this conquest by Alexander and then the empires that flowed from 01:22:06.400 --> 01:22:09.360 his empire when he died. 01:22:09.360 --> 01:22:12.320 But to return to the point that I was making before that 01:22:12.320 --> 01:22:18.240 aside, the Greek was received in part, as Woe was saying, because 01:22:18.400 --> 01:22:22.880 the people spoke Greek, and so having a Greek version of the 01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:27.280 Old Testament to use in the synagogues was of great benefit. 01:22:27.280 --> 01:22:31.840 It is the equivalent in that day and age of what we 01:22:31.840 --> 01:22:37.440 had with the Reformation making the text of Scripture available to the 01:22:37.440 --> 01:22:42.240 common man, because the common German didn't read Latin at that point. 01:22:42.240 --> 01:22:46.880 Obviously the educated class still did, Luther knew Latin, Luther knew Greek, 01:22:46.880 --> 01:22:50.880 and so did various other professors and those who were priests or 01:22:50.880 --> 01:22:55.840 monks. The educated upper class knew these languages, but the common man 01:22:55.840 --> 01:22:56.240 did not. 01:22:56.880 --> 01:22:59.200 The same thing is true at this time. 01:22:59.200 --> 01:23:04.560 There was some tiny group of priests mostly in Jerusalem who still 01:23:04.560 --> 01:23:05.840 knew Hebrew. 01:23:05.840 --> 01:23:10.080 There were some people who knew Aramaic, but Greek was the lingua 01:23:10.080 --> 01:23:14.080 franca, and so you had this translation into the Greek that made 01:23:14.080 --> 01:23:17.760 Scripture available to the common man again. 01:23:18.080 --> 01:23:22.320 Because if you heard the scripture read in the synagogue in Greek, 01:23:22.320 --> 01:23:23.920 you could understand it. 01:23:23.920 --> 01:23:26.880 The same thing as when we switched from reading it in Latin, 01:23:26.880 --> 01:23:30.880 which most men did not understand, to reading it in German or 01:23:30.880 --> 01:23:35.920 English or French, suddenly the common man can understand Scripture again. 01:23:35.920 --> 01:23:39.600 This is a huge change, this is vitally important. 01:23:39.600 --> 01:23:44.960 God wants His Word to be accessible in the common language, because 01:23:44.960 --> 01:23:47.200 He wants us to study his word. 01:23:47.200 --> 01:23:51.040 Now that doesn't mean that we're being inconsistent as we've made comments 01:23:51.040 --> 01:23:56.080 in the past that universal literacy is perhaps not necessarily ideal. 01:23:56.080 --> 01:24:00.640 Because do bear in mind, scripture was meant to be read aloud. 01:24:00.640 --> 01:24:02.080 Much of Scripture. 01:24:02.080 --> 01:24:05.040 It is written in such a way that it is best when 01:24:05.040 --> 01:24:05.760 read aloud. 01:24:05.760 --> 01:24:08.800 In fact, there are comments in Scripture saying that blessed is the 01:24:08.800 --> 01:24:12.800 man who reads it aloud and blessed is the man who listens, 01:24:12.800 --> 01:24:14.480 because it is meant to be read. 01:24:14.480 --> 01:24:18.240 And so there's nothing wrong with having some portion of your population 01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:21.840 unable to read it who can still hear it. 01:24:21.840 --> 01:24:24.320 And in fact it does help if it is read in the 01:24:24.320 --> 01:24:26.400 language you actually understand. 01:24:27.200 --> 01:24:30.400 Just hearing it, you you don't get points for that. 01:24:30.400 --> 01:24:33.440 If you hear scripture read in a language that you do not 01:24:33.440 --> 01:24:36.080 understand, it's not benefiting you. 01:24:36.080 --> 01:24:39.120 Because it is the understanding that benefits. 01:24:39.120 --> 01:24:44.160 And so And so having this change of the Old Testament into 01:24:44.320 --> 01:24:47.440 Greek, which is of course God's plan, as we will make that 01:24:47.440 --> 01:24:51.920 case more in future episodes than this one, but it is also 01:24:51.920 --> 01:24:56.160 of huge benefit to anyone who took the Word of God to 01:24:56.160 --> 01:24:59.120 be the Word of God because now they can actually hear and 01:24:59.120 --> 01:25:00.480 understand it again. 01:25:00.480 --> 01:25:03.360 It is no longer being read in a language that is a 01:25:03.360 --> 01:25:04.880 foreign language. 01:25:04.880 --> 01:25:09.840 Just Just because a language is the historical language of your people, 01:25:09.840 --> 01:25:13.280 does not mean it is not a foreign language to you. 01:25:13.280 --> 01:25:15.760 There was a point in my life where I did not know 01:25:15.760 --> 01:25:18.480 German. German was a foreign language to me. 01:25:18.480 --> 01:25:20.800 I'm German by blood. 01:25:20.800 --> 01:25:24.720 My family, all the way back, except for the percentage that is 01:25:24.720 --> 01:25:26.640 Scottish, is German. 01:25:26.640 --> 01:25:28.880 I don't speak Scots, incidentally. 01:25:28.880 --> 01:25:30.880 That's the language of my ancestors. 01:25:31.040 --> 01:25:34.800 I don't know it, it's a foreign language. 01:25:34.800 --> 01:25:38.800 For the Jewish people at this time historically, Hebrew was a foreign 01:25:38.800 --> 01:25:41.840 language. It was a language they did not know, because some of 01:25:41.840 --> 01:25:45.360 them knew Aramaic, and most of them knew Greek, because that was 01:25:45.360 --> 01:25:51.520 the language of empire, it was the language of the entire region. 01:25:51.520 --> 01:25:55.200 And so as Wo mentioned, you have a number of things that 01:25:55.200 --> 01:25:55.840 all come together 01:25:57.200 --> 01:26:01.600 as if by miracle, at the same time to see this explosion 01:26:01.600 --> 01:26:07.200 of Christianity, the spread of Christianity, mostly into Europe, but eventually to 01:26:07.200 --> 01:26:12.480 the entirety of the world carried by European explorers and colonizers. 01:26:12.480 --> 01:26:16.880 But all of these things take place at the same time and 01:26:16.880 --> 01:26:20.240 are a necessary part of it, and so one of them is 01:26:20.240 --> 01:26:24.480 that Greek becomes the lingua franca because scripture is written in Greek. 01:26:25.600 --> 01:26:29.280 If people don't understand Greek, it is going to be much more 01:26:29.280 --> 01:26:33.600 difficult to transmit the actual faith to them because you're going to 01:26:33.600 --> 01:26:35.440 have to translate it first. 01:26:35.440 --> 01:26:39.440 That's one of the challenges that we encountered during the period of 01:26:39.440 --> 01:26:44.080 colonization. We had to translate Scripture into the local languages or teach 01:26:44.080 --> 01:26:48.160 those locals a European language before we could teach them the faith. 01:26:48.160 --> 01:26:51.680 Because again, it doesn't benefit you if you listen but do not 01:26:51.680 --> 01:26:55.680 understand. You have to understand what is being said. 01:26:55.680 --> 01:27:00.160 But in addition to the Greek language, one of the other essentially 01:27:00.160 --> 01:27:04.800 necessary parts of this equation is the Roman Empire. 01:27:04.800 --> 01:27:11.360 Because the Roman Empire builds out infrastructure in order to have a 01:27:11.360 --> 01:27:16.480 much more organized system of trade and cultural exchange than what was 01:27:16.480 --> 01:27:18.160 there under the Greeks? 01:27:18.160 --> 01:27:22.160 The Greeks were more disjointed, the Romans were more organized. 01:27:22.640 --> 01:27:23.920 And so you see 01:27:24.800 --> 01:27:28.800 the Romans go to war with the Seleucids, and with others as 01:27:28.800 --> 01:27:32.000 well, obviously they eventually conquer Egypt as well. 01:27:32.000 --> 01:27:36.000 But you see Rome conquering this territory, and that is why, of 01:27:36.000 --> 01:27:39.520 course, Christ stands before Pontius Pilate. 01:27:39.600 --> 01:27:43.920 He's not standing before the Seleucid Empire. 01:27:43.920 --> 01:27:47.680 He's not standing before King Ptolemy. 01:27:47.680 --> 01:27:52.320 He's standing before Roman Pontius Pilate. 01:27:52.320 --> 01:27:58.880 But with the conquest of the region by Rome, incidentally, one of 01:27:58.880 --> 01:28:02.960 the things that Rome acquires through this conquest of not just the 01:28:02.960 --> 01:28:07.120 region of Palestine, but all of the formerly Greek territories is that 01:28:07.120 --> 01:28:09.040 Rome starts using Greek. 01:28:09.040 --> 01:28:13.680 Because Koina Greek becomes the language of everyday life in the Roman 01:28:13.680 --> 01:28:18.960 Empire. Now Latin is still the language of the government and high 01:28:18.960 --> 01:28:24.080 culture and things like that, but Greek is used in everyday life. 01:28:24.080 --> 01:28:27.600 It is the language of trade, it is the language of just 01:28:28.080 --> 01:28:30.960 living your life in the Roman Empire. 01:28:30.960 --> 01:28:33.600 There are some areas where some people would still know a little 01:28:33.600 --> 01:28:38.400 bit of Aramaic, or whatever the local language is, but Greek was 01:28:38.400 --> 01:28:43.360 the language you used as a Roman imperial citizen in this period. 01:28:43.360 --> 01:28:46.720 And so now we have the stage set for what happens in 01:28:46.720 --> 01:28:48.000 the New Testament. 01:28:48.000 --> 01:28:52.800 Because now we have a common language, we have a common government, 01:28:52.800 --> 01:28:55.920 we have a structure that can be used to spread the Christian 01:28:55.920 --> 01:28:59.840 faith. This is all God working out working out in time the 01:28:59.840 --> 01:29:06.080 things that he promised, he is setting the stage for rebuilding a 01:29:06.080 --> 01:29:10.400 true Christendom, for rebuilding the Christian church. 01:29:10.400 --> 01:29:12.400 Because it's almost gone from the world at this point. 01:29:13.200 --> 01:29:16.320 There really are not very many believers. 01:29:16.320 --> 01:29:20.160 God is fulfilling what He promised in so many places in the 01:29:20.160 --> 01:29:23.120 Old Testament, through all of these things that if you just look 01:29:23.120 --> 01:29:26.800 at it through a purely secular lens, it looks like a very 01:29:26.800 --> 01:29:28.320 strange history. 01:29:28.320 --> 01:29:31.760 Now partly of course it's because this area is a confluence, it's 01:29:31.680 --> 01:29:35.600 a meeting of empires, just geographically speaking. 01:29:35.600 --> 01:29:39.440 But God selected it partly for that reason. 01:29:39.440 --> 01:29:44.480 These are the necessary preconditions in order to have the Christian faith 01:29:44.480 --> 01:29:48.080 spread as rapidly and as far as it does. 01:29:48.080 --> 01:29:53.600 And one of the absolutely essential parts of that was that translation 01:29:53.840 --> 01:29:55.040 into Greek. 01:29:55.040 --> 01:29:58.640 And you see that happening in the intertestamental period, and you see 01:29:58.640 --> 01:30:03.600 it happening under conditions where Greek is already the dominant language, because 01:30:03.600 --> 01:30:06.640 that is part of what facilitated that adoption. 01:30:06.640 --> 01:30:12.080 If Greek had just been some secondary or tertiary language in some 01:30:12.080 --> 01:30:16.160 empire, some irrelevant language that's used by a certain percentage percentage of 01:30:16.160 --> 01:30:18.880 people, it would not have spread as quickly, it would not have 01:30:18.880 --> 01:30:20.560 been adopted as quickly. 01:30:20.560 --> 01:30:26.000 Because bear in mind, when you have the letters from the apostles, 01:30:26.000 --> 01:30:28.960 when you have the letters of Paul that start circulating in the 01:30:28.960 --> 01:30:32.880 early church, well the synagogues all already have copies of the Old 01:30:32.880 --> 01:30:35.200 Testament in Greek. 01:30:35.200 --> 01:30:39.360 They can look at what was written of the New Testament in 01:30:39.360 --> 01:30:42.560 Greek and compare it to what is written in the Old Testament 01:30:42.880 --> 01:30:44.080 in Greek. 01:30:44.080 --> 01:30:47.200 Because what is written in those letters is in fact citing what 01:30:47.200 --> 01:30:51.120 is written in those documents they already had on hand, because they 01:30:51.120 --> 01:30:54.560 had the Septuagint, because it's the Word of God, and they received 01:30:54.640 --> 01:30:54.720 it 01:30:55.600 --> 01:30:58.560 as the Word of God. 01:30:58.560 --> 01:31:02.160 Before we move on to sort of the next part of the 01:31:02.160 --> 01:31:06.960 history, there is one sort of historical tidbit, we'll call it, that 01:31:06.960 --> 01:31:10.480 is that is necessary to note, because undoubtedly there will be those 01:31:10.480 --> 01:31:13.520 who will bring it up, and so it is worth mentioning. 01:31:13.520 --> 01:31:18.080 We've mentioned it in previous episodes, particularly the series on the Jews, 01:31:18.080 --> 01:31:21.680 but you have the Maccabean Revolt. 01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:26.800 And the part of that that is relevant for this particular episode, 01:31:26.800 --> 01:31:33.600 for this series of episodes, is that they do indeed attempt unsuccessfully, 01:31:33.600 --> 01:31:39.520 but they attempt to resurrect and start using the Hebrew language again. 01:31:39.520 --> 01:31:42.560 Now it should tell you something, that they have to try to 01:31:42.560 --> 01:31:44.160 resurrect it. 01:31:44.160 --> 01:31:47.280 Because you don't have to resurrect a language that is still in 01:31:47.280 --> 01:31:48.640 active use. 01:31:48.640 --> 01:31:52.320 And so, for instance, in the cave of letters so-called, you will 01:31:52.320 --> 01:31:56.080 find some things that are written in Hebrew. 01:31:56.080 --> 01:32:01.520 However, the overwhelming majority of what was found there is not Hebrew. 01:32:01.520 --> 01:32:06.400 Hebrew accounts for only a tiny minority of what was found from 01:32:06.400 --> 01:32:09.200 this period of the Maccabean Revolt. 01:32:09.200 --> 01:32:09.520 And 01:32:10.480 --> 01:32:15.120 my favorite quote from all of the documents in that collection is 01:32:15.280 --> 01:32:20.000 there is one scroll written in Greek that says, This is written 01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:23.040 in Greek because we could not find a way to write it 01:32:23.040 --> 01:32:25.040 in Hebrew. 01:32:25.360 --> 01:32:30.080 So even the Maccabees, who were attempting in sort of a LARPy 01:32:30.160 --> 01:32:33.680 fashion in some ways, but who were attempting to bring back the 01:32:33.680 --> 01:32:39.840 Hebrew language and re-establish an old testament kingdom of Israel, could not 01:32:39.600 --> 01:32:43.520 could not even manage to write their own letters in Hebrew because 01:32:43.520 --> 01:32:48.400 they didn't know it and neither did anyone else. 01:32:48.400 --> 01:32:53.360 By this point, by the time you have Rome as the authority 01:32:53.360 --> 01:32:57.040 in this region, Hebrew is dead. 01:32:57.040 --> 01:33:02.240 Even the upper classes and the priestly caste, those who would have 01:33:02.240 --> 01:33:06.240 known Hebrew had retained it the longest would have retained it the 01:33:06.240 --> 01:33:10.160 longest, no longer knew it. 01:33:10.160 --> 01:33:12.160 That is the end of the Hebrew language. 01:33:12.160 --> 01:33:15.680 It is dead and it will be gone for essentially two thousand 01:33:15.760 --> 01:33:18.320 years, which we will get into later. 01:33:18.320 --> 01:33:22.640 The language of the people, the language of the empire, and the 01:33:22.640 --> 01:33:26.560 language of scripture, they're all Greek. 01:33:26.560 --> 01:33:28.560 The language is Greek. 01:33:28.560 --> 01:33:34.640 It is no longer some other language, because that language is dead 01:33:34.640 --> 01:33:35.920 and gone. 01:33:35.920 --> 01:33:41.360 God rendered his judgment on the Hebrew language through this process. 01:33:41.360 --> 01:33:46.720 If God had wanted to preserve his word in Hebrew, he would 01:33:46.720 --> 01:33:49.600 have preserved the documents in Hebrew. 01:33:49.600 --> 01:33:51.200 We don't find that. 01:33:51.200 --> 01:33:55.600 He would have preserved the oral tradition that was necessary to interpret 01:33:55.920 --> 01:33:58.560 those documents, we don't find that. 01:33:58.560 --> 01:34:04.000 He would have preserved the language itself, we don't find that. 01:34:04.000 --> 01:34:08.080 The history of this is so abundantly clear that the only way 01:34:08.080 --> 01:34:11.760 you can possibly come to a false conclusion on it is to 01:34:11.760 --> 01:34:15.840 be unaware of the history, or to be so biased in favor 01:34:15.920 --> 01:34:19.840 of believing that the Old Testament has to be Hebrew, which the 01:34:19.840 --> 01:34:21.920 church never believed. 01:34:22.160 --> 01:34:26.160 that you come to the conclusion at odds with all of the 01:34:26.160 --> 01:34:30.240 evidence, at odds with the weight of the evidence of what your 01:34:30.400 --> 01:34:33.680 forefathers in the faith actually believed. 01:34:33.680 --> 01:34:38.000 Because the Christian Church was built on Greek, the Christian forefathers in 01:34:38.000 --> 01:34:41.920 the faith believed the Greek was the Word of God, and even 01:34:41.920 --> 01:34:46.560 the Jews of this time believed the Greek was the Word of 01:34:46.560 --> 01:34:49.840 God. They received it in all of their synagogues. 01:34:49.840 --> 01:34:53.360 The only reason they started to object to it is because they 01:34:53.360 --> 01:34:57.280 realized it was spreading Christianity. 01:34:57.280 --> 01:34:59.920 This should call to mind something that came up in a previous 01:34:59.920 --> 01:35:05.520 episode. At one point, rabbinic interpretation of the Old Testament had what 01:35:05.520 --> 01:35:08.240 they called the second power in heaven. 01:35:08.240 --> 01:35:12.560 They read the Old Testament and they recognized there are very clear 01:35:12.560 --> 01:35:19.680 instances where there are two persons described, there are two persons, two 01:35:19.920 --> 01:35:25.440 deities, to speak somewhat inaccurately, but I'll clarify in a second, who 01:35:25.440 --> 01:35:28.000 are involved in what is happening. 01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:31.600 They didn't necessarily know how to handle that, and so they spoke 01:35:31.600 --> 01:35:33.520 of this second power in heaven. 01:35:33.520 --> 01:35:36.080 Of course, we as Christians know what is going on. 01:35:36.080 --> 01:35:37.520 This is the triune God. 01:35:37.520 --> 01:35:40.400 We're dealing with the person of the Father and the Person of 01:35:40.400 --> 01:35:44.240 the Son, one deity, one essence, but three persons. 01:35:44.240 --> 01:35:48.000 The Jews didn't happen to notice the Holy Spirit by and large, 01:35:48.000 --> 01:35:51.120 but they noticed there's this second person. 01:35:51.120 --> 01:35:56.800 They only stopped using that interpretation and started covering it up and 01:35:56.800 --> 01:36:01.120 trying to erase any sort of indication they'd ever done this when 01:36:01.120 --> 01:36:05.040 it became obvious that well, this is exactly what the Christians are 01:36:05.040 --> 01:36:09.360 saying, because it was facilitating conversion to Christianity. 01:36:09.360 --> 01:36:12.720 Because the Christians were saying, you know that second person in heaven, 01:36:12.720 --> 01:36:14.640 that second power in heaven? 01:36:14.640 --> 01:36:18.800 That's Jesus, who died and rose again. 01:36:18.800 --> 01:36:21.520 Well they did the same thing with the Greek. 01:36:21.520 --> 01:36:24.480 The Greek was completely fine with them, until it turned out that 01:36:24.480 --> 01:36:26.720 using Greek starts to make Christians. 01:36:26.720 --> 01:36:29.440 And that's why they tried to bring back the Hebrew. 01:36:29.440 --> 01:36:32.240 Because they didn't want to make Christians. 01:36:32.240 --> 01:36:34.960 And so we should be very wary when this sort of thing 01:36:34.960 --> 01:36:39.120 happens. Satan is a lion who prowls about seeking whom he may 01:36:39.120 --> 01:36:42.640 devour, and he is entirely willing to use whatever tool is at 01:36:42.640 --> 01:36:46.560 hand. If it happens to be a language that died and was 01:36:46.560 --> 01:36:48.800 resurrected, so be it. 01:36:48.800 --> 01:36:52.960 If it happens to be a version of supposedly a translation of 01:36:52.960 --> 01:36:55.680 scripture that was held in the hand of apostates out in the 01:36:55.680 --> 01:37:00.160 desert for some unknown period of time and then present it whole 01:37:00.160 --> 01:37:01.040 to Christians? 01:37:01.040 --> 01:37:03.120 Of course I mean the Masoretic text. 01:37:03.120 --> 01:37:05.040 He's willing to do that too. 01:37:05.040 --> 01:37:09.360 We should not discount the beliefs of our forefathers in the faith. 01:37:09.360 --> 01:37:12.480 And our forefathers in the faith all believed. 01:37:12.480 --> 01:37:14.880 The Septuagint is the Word of God. 01:37:14.880 --> 01:37:18.560 Not just that it is a translation as we typically think of 01:37:18.560 --> 01:37:19.840 that word today. 01:37:19.840 --> 01:37:21.680 That's not how they thought of it. 01:37:21.680 --> 01:37:26.800 They thought of it as a divinely inspired translation, as the actual 01:37:27.040 --> 01:37:32.000 literal word of God preserved by God down through the ages, in 01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:35.920 this case in the Greek language, in order to facilitate the growth 01:37:36.400 --> 01:37:40.320 of the Church God knows exactly what he's doing, and if we 01:37:40.320 --> 01:37:44.640 look at history, sometimes it's clear what he is doing and why. 01:37:44.640 --> 01:37:48.720 In the case of the Septuagint, it's very obvious why. 01:37:48.720 --> 01:37:53.520 Because Greek was the language that facilitated the growth of the church. 01:37:53.520 --> 01:37:55.120 Hebrew would not have done 01:37:55.120 --> 01:37:57.600 so. So 01:37:57.600 --> 01:38:00.560 Corey mentioned the Maccabean Revolt, and just to put a date on 01:38:00.560 --> 01:38:04.080 that, that was between about a hundred and sixty seven and forty. 01:38:04.080 --> 01:38:06.080 years before Christ's birth. 01:38:06.080 --> 01:38:10.480 So yeah, that's century and a half, two centuries before Jesus is 01:38:10.480 --> 01:38:12.480 born is walking around. 01:38:12.480 --> 01:38:15.680 Your pastor's probably told he was speaking Hebrew and everyone is speaking 01:38:15.680 --> 01:38:19.200 Hebrew. They wrote the letter saying we can't even find anybody to 01:38:19.200 --> 01:38:20.880 write this in Hebrew. 01:38:20.880 --> 01:38:26.000 And this is not shocking if you know the the Deuterocanonical or 01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:30.960 the Apocryphal books, depending on your perspective, written after Malachi and before 01:38:30.960 --> 01:38:33.840 Matthew were all written in Greek. 01:38:33.840 --> 01:38:38.480 Malachi about four thirty BC was the last thing that we have 01:38:38.480 --> 01:38:39.840 written in Hebrew. 01:38:39.840 --> 01:38:43.120 Everything after that from the Jews was written in Greek. 01:38:43.120 --> 01:38:46.000 And they continued to write and record books. 01:38:46.000 --> 01:38:48.320 And a point that I didn't make at the beginning that is 01:38:48.320 --> 01:38:50.320 a crucial part of this. 01:38:50.320 --> 01:38:54.320 When we are talking about the legitimacy of the Septuagint as a 01:38:54.640 --> 01:39:01.760 textual source, this conversation is completely separate from the question of canon. 01:39:01.760 --> 01:39:07.520 So there are three codices of scripture from about the fourth century 01:39:07.760 --> 01:39:11.840 that contain they're entirely Greek and they contain both the Old and 01:39:11.840 --> 01:39:12.640 the New Testament. 01:39:12.640 --> 01:39:15.120 Codex is basically an early version of a book. 01:39:15.120 --> 01:39:16.080 So it looks like a book. 01:39:16.080 --> 01:39:20.560 It's got a binding, it's got sheets, writing on both sides. 01:39:20.560 --> 01:39:23.360 Those are called on seals or on seals. 01:39:23.360 --> 01:39:26.160 I prefer unseal because it's gross looking word if you don't pronounce 01:39:26.160 --> 01:39:26.800 it that way. 01:39:26.800 --> 01:39:28.960 But it's pronounced either way. 01:39:29.280 --> 01:39:33.840 Those examples from the fourth century AD are the oldest examples of 01:39:33.840 --> 01:39:36.400 the entirely Greek Bible that we have. 01:39:36.400 --> 01:39:37.920 So it's Old and New Testament. 01:39:37.920 --> 01:39:41.200 It's not just the Septuagint, but it includes that, but it's also 01:39:41.200 --> 01:39:43.760 the New Testament. 01:39:43.760 --> 01:39:48.000 One of the fights that occurred at the time of the Reformation 01:39:48.080 --> 01:39:51.440 and is going to occur again, and I don't take a position 01:39:51.440 --> 01:39:56.000 on it either way, is whether these dedo-canonical or apocryphal books that 01:39:56.000 --> 01:40:00.720 were written in Greek between Malachi and Matthew, whether any of them 01:40:00.720 --> 01:40:02.720 should be received as scripture. 01:40:02.720 --> 01:40:07.360 It's a separate question from which source we use. 01:40:07.360 --> 01:40:09.760 I hope that's easy to understand. 01:40:09.760 --> 01:40:12.480 We are not saying that everything that was written in Greek is 01:40:12.480 --> 01:40:17.600 Scripture. We are saying that we only receive as Scripture that which 01:40:17.600 --> 01:40:19.120 was written in Greek. 01:40:19.120 --> 01:40:22.080 That's a subset of everything written in Scripture. 01:40:22.080 --> 01:40:26.080 So when you look at the Reformation era arguments that we'll be 01:40:26.080 --> 01:40:32.080 getting to in the next episode, against the Deuterocan or the Apocrypha, 01:40:32.080 --> 01:40:35.520 much of their thinking is predicated on an argument that we're going 01:40:35.520 --> 01:40:37.680 to get to in a minute, which amounts to they weren't written 01:40:38.000 --> 01:40:40.240 in Hebrew, so they can be inspired. 01:40:40.240 --> 01:40:41.680 That's pretty much the whole argument. 01:40:41.680 --> 01:40:44.880 Like as far as Luther and Gerhard and a number of others 01:40:44.880 --> 01:40:47.280 were concerned, that's the whole shooting match. 01:40:47.280 --> 01:40:50.320 If it wasn't written in Hebrew, it can't have been prophetically inspired 01:40:50.320 --> 01:40:51.040 by God. 01:40:51.040 --> 01:40:55.440 I I don't think that's a reasonable argument, but that was the 01:40:55.440 --> 01:40:57.280 route that they went. 01:40:57.280 --> 01:41:00.560 And it's important, and we'll deal with this in detail during the 01:41:00.560 --> 01:41:01.840 next episode. 01:41:01.840 --> 01:41:05.600 When they were having that fight, they were principally fighting against doctrines 01:41:05.600 --> 01:41:12.160 like purgatory and indulgences, where the proof texts that Rome was using 01:41:12.160 --> 01:41:15.920 were exclusively from in prayers for the dead, they're exclusively from the 01:41:16.000 --> 01:41:18.480 Deuterocana or the Apocrypha. 01:41:18.480 --> 01:41:22.560 And so the reformers killed two birds with one stone by saying, 01:41:22.560 --> 01:41:25.840 we don't think that's scripture anyway, because it wasn't written in Hebrew. 01:41:25.840 --> 01:41:29.120 And also we reject this because we believe it's false doctrine that 01:41:29.440 --> 01:41:32.080 conflicts the rest of what's in scripture. 01:41:32.080 --> 01:41:33.920 Those are two separate questions. 01:41:33.920 --> 01:41:37.280 And it's entirely possible to say that we don't disregard it because 01:41:37.280 --> 01:41:40.080 it's not written in Hebrew, and to say we must disregard it 01:41:40.080 --> 01:41:43.360 as Scripture because it conflicts with the rest of Scripture. 01:41:43.360 --> 01:41:47.840 So So we are not taking a position on whether the entire 01:41:47.840 --> 01:41:51.520 table of contents at any of those Greek unseals from the fourth 01:41:51.520 --> 01:41:54.480 century is the entire inspired word of God. 01:41:54.480 --> 01:41:57.360 We're just saying that whatever we're looking at, whatever canon we're going 01:41:57.360 --> 01:42:00.960 to use, we should only be drawing from Greek sources. 01:42:00.960 --> 01:42:04.320 So some people are gonna just refuse to hear us and think, 01:42:04.320 --> 01:42:07.280 oh, you you want 73 books and you want the prayers for 01:42:07.280 --> 01:42:11.040 the dead and no, I'm still a Lutheran. 01:42:11.040 --> 01:42:14.320 I don't want that stuff because I don't believe it's in accord 01:42:14.320 --> 01:42:15.760 with scripture. 01:42:15.760 --> 01:42:18.560 But the separate fight that we're not even going to get into, 01:42:18.560 --> 01:42:21.840 we're going to talk about the historical thing, but we're not picking 01:42:21.840 --> 01:42:22.640 a fight here. 01:42:22.640 --> 01:42:26.240 I think that those are open questions, and frankly, they were open 01:42:26.240 --> 01:42:28.320 questions in Luther's day. 01:42:28.320 --> 01:42:34.320 There was no Western canon of scripture until Trent and Trent in 01:42:34.720 --> 01:42:39.840 fifteen forty six declared the canon of scripture to include the Duder 01:42:39.840 --> 01:42:43.520 Canon, specifically against the Protestant Reformers. 01:42:43.520 --> 01:42:48.880 So when Luther initially questioned those, he wasn't doing anything that was 01:42:48.880 --> 01:42:49.520 out of order. 01:42:49.520 --> 01:42:52.800 That had been a question that the church had been debating for 01:42:52.880 --> 01:42:54.560 1400 years or so. 01:42:54.560 --> 01:42:56.240 Which books are scripture? 01:42:56.240 --> 01:42:58.080 Is an important question. 01:42:58.080 --> 01:43:02.160 We're not taking sides, we're not adding anything, we're not subscribing to 01:43:02.160 --> 01:43:05.600 doctrines that I would plainly reject on the basis of the rest 01:43:05.600 --> 01:43:06.880 of Scripture. 01:43:06.880 --> 01:43:11.840 It's a separate question whether every Greek book that's in those unseals 01:43:12.080 --> 01:43:12.720 is scripture. 01:43:12.960 --> 01:43:16.000 I think probably not, but I think some of them we probably 01:43:16.000 --> 01:43:19.440 don't have a reason to reject what the early church thought. 01:43:19.440 --> 01:43:20.960 It's a separate question. 01:43:20.960 --> 01:43:22.560 We're not taking a position. 01:43:22.560 --> 01:43:25.440 And if you agree with us about the Greek, you can stick 01:43:25.840 --> 01:43:27.920 to your sixty six books. 01:43:27.920 --> 01:43:30.960 So if on the far side of all of these discussions, many 01:43:30.960 --> 01:43:33.360 of which are not have not happened yet and won't for some 01:43:33.360 --> 01:43:36.160 time, you still end up with sixty six books in your Bible 01:43:36.240 --> 01:43:38.880 and they're all based on Greek, I say great. 01:43:39.440 --> 01:43:42.960 that's exactly where we need to get. 01:43:42.960 --> 01:43:46.000 And if there are other books that should have been received as 01:43:46.000 --> 01:43:51.840 scripture when we don't take post-temple destruction Jewish arguments against them as 01:43:51.840 --> 01:43:54.160 fact, which is what happened in the Reformation. 01:43:54.160 --> 01:43:56.560 If we end up with other books, I don't care. 01:43:56.560 --> 01:43:58.080 It's a possibility. 01:43:58.080 --> 01:44:01.200 We're saying that the door is open as it always has been, 01:44:01.200 --> 01:44:02.800 but we're not picking a side. 01:44:02.800 --> 01:44:03.920 And we won't. 01:44:03.920 --> 01:44:07.280 I've read them and some of them I'm like, I don't know. 01:44:07.280 --> 01:44:09.120 And others like it seems fine. 01:44:09.120 --> 01:44:10.800 I'm not the one to make those decisions. 01:44:10.800 --> 01:44:12.080 And frankly, you aren't either. 01:44:12.080 --> 01:44:13.120 None of us are. 01:44:13.120 --> 01:44:16.640 Collectively as a church, we will have to take a look with 01:44:16.640 --> 01:44:20.960 fresh eyes, and asking exactly the same questions been asked since the 01:44:20.960 --> 01:44:23.280 first and second century. 01:44:23.280 --> 01:44:23.600 So 01:44:24.560 --> 01:44:29.200 just be aware that you are not subscribing to the Roman Catholic 01:44:29.200 --> 01:44:33.600 Bible by saying I prefer the Septuagint, or more properly, I believe 01:44:33.600 --> 01:44:36.320 the Septuagint is the only inspired word of God. 01:44:36.320 --> 01:44:39.440 It's not a question of canon, it's a question of textual source. 01:44:39.440 --> 01:44:43.600 It's two separable subjects, and we're only touching one of 'em. 01:44:43.600 --> 01:44:45.920 But when you look at the Dudo Canon was only written in 01:44:45.920 --> 01:44:48.640 Greek. And so when we make the claim that in the first 01:44:48.800 --> 01:44:52.480 century AD, that Jesus and the apostles were speaking Greek and maybe 01:44:52.480 --> 01:44:55.440 a little bit of Aramaic, that there no one was running around 01:44:55.440 --> 01:45:00.640 speaking Hebrew, we're not departing from anything except for what history plainly 01:45:00.640 --> 01:45:05.360 proves. As I said earlier, it's likely that there was some Hebrew 01:45:05.360 --> 01:45:10.880 use, actual Hebrew oral tradition in the liturgy that may have been 01:45:10.880 --> 01:45:11.760 familiar to them. 01:45:11.760 --> 01:45:15.280 Maybe they could spit some words back, just like most people probably 01:45:15.280 --> 01:45:16.880 know a little bit of Latin. 01:45:16.880 --> 01:45:20.160 Even, you know, in the Lutheran churches, there are bits and pieces 01:45:20.160 --> 01:45:23.200 of Latin that is preserved as the names for things like the 01:45:23.200 --> 01:45:27.920 Nunctabidas. That's something that everybody more or less knows what it means, 01:45:27.920 --> 01:45:30.080 even though it's an alien language to us. 01:45:30.080 --> 01:45:32.640 These things happen in the liturgy, and it's fine. 01:45:32.640 --> 01:45:34.960 It's fine to preserve tradition that way. 01:45:34.960 --> 01:45:38.480 What's not fine to do is say, oh, I found three bits 01:45:38.480 --> 01:45:40.320 of Hebrew in the entire New Testament. 01:45:40.320 --> 01:45:43.120 That means they were all speaking Hebrew, which is basically where we 01:45:43.120 --> 01:45:43.920 ended up. 01:45:43.920 --> 01:45:47.280 That's what we're being told in the twenty-first century by our teachers. 01:45:47.280 --> 01:45:52.400 It's plainly false and crucially, what it does is it invites post 01:45:52.640 --> 01:45:56.880 temple Christ killers back to the conversation with Christians, which is where 01:45:56.880 --> 01:45:58.640 this episode is gonna end up. 01:45:58.640 --> 01:46:01.600 That is not a place that the church should ever have gone. 01:46:01.600 --> 01:46:06.880 Men went there for seemingly good reasons, but they disobeyed Christ when 01:46:06.880 --> 01:46:07.520 they did it. 01:46:07.520 --> 01:46:11.760 And so that's where we're gonna finish up here today. 01:46:12.560 --> 01:46:15.680 So as I said, we're gonna do the fourth episode of this 01:46:15.680 --> 01:46:20.800 series entirely on the reception of the Septuagint in the New Testament. 01:46:20.800 --> 01:46:24.720 And then the third episode will just be the Old Testament differences 01:46:24.720 --> 01:46:27.600 between the Masoretic, which we'll talk about in a minute It and 01:46:27.600 --> 01:46:29.440 the Septuagint. 01:46:29.440 --> 01:46:32.160 So as a result, we're not going to specifically talk about what 01:46:32.160 --> 01:46:35.600 Jesus and the apostles were doing at that time beyond just to 01:46:35.600 --> 01:46:40.000 state the obvious fact that they were speaking Greek, they were preaching 01:46:40.000 --> 01:46:41.280 and teaching in Greek. 01:46:41.280 --> 01:46:43.200 They were quoting Greek. 01:46:43.200 --> 01:46:44.800 Greek was their language. 01:46:44.800 --> 01:46:46.240 That should be good enough for us. 01:46:46.240 --> 01:46:48.320 That's a 30-second episode. 01:46:48.320 --> 01:46:50.160 But subsequent to 01:46:51.120 --> 01:46:54.560 the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the deaths of 01:46:54.560 --> 01:46:58.560 all the apostles, the church was born in the wake of that. 01:46:58.560 --> 01:47:03.040 That was the beginning of the church, effectively at Pentecost. 01:47:03.040 --> 01:47:07.520 During the first, second, and third centuries, there were a couple moments 01:47:07.680 --> 01:47:10.000 in the fourth century in particular. 01:47:10.000 --> 01:47:14.560 There were a couple small moments that at the time mostly seemed 01:47:14.560 --> 01:47:16.960 academic in nature. 01:47:16.960 --> 01:47:20.880 And what they did, even though they were very small changes at 01:47:21.360 --> 01:47:25.920 the time, they laid foundations for the reason we're doing this entire 01:47:25.920 --> 01:47:29.840 series. They laid the foundations for the rejection of the Septuagint, even 01:47:29.840 --> 01:47:32.000 though that wasn't their intention. 01:47:32.000 --> 01:47:37.360 The The first of those men was Origen, who before about 240 01:47:37.360 --> 01:47:42.080 AD wrote what is called his hexapla. 01:47:42.080 --> 01:47:49.600 It was a large compendium with six columns of six different versions 01:47:49.600 --> 01:47:51.360 of the Old Testament. 01:47:51.360 --> 01:47:55.840 There was one in Hebrew, there was a Greek direct transliteration of 01:47:55.840 --> 01:47:58.480 that Hebrew, word character for character, word for word. 01:47:58.960 --> 01:48:03.360 And then there were four different Greek translations of the Hebrew. 01:48:03.360 --> 01:48:08.080 And he was doing this side by side again around 240 AD, 01:48:08.080 --> 01:48:11.440 specifically because there were a number of different copies of the Septuagint 01:48:11.520 --> 01:48:15.520 floating around And he just wanted to sort it out. 01:48:15.520 --> 01:48:19.280 The exact same sort of textual critical problems that we have today, 01:48:19.280 --> 01:48:23.040 where, you know, problem in the sense that one manuscript doesn't match 01:48:23.040 --> 01:48:24.080 another manuscript. 01:48:24.080 --> 01:48:25.680 Let's figure out why they're not the same. 01:48:25.680 --> 01:48:27.280 Was there a copyist error? 01:48:27.280 --> 01:48:29.120 Was someone trying to change something? 01:48:29.120 --> 01:48:32.240 Was it a marginal addition that crept in? 01:48:32.240 --> 01:48:35.040 These things happen when you're hand copying things. 01:48:35.040 --> 01:48:39.440 And we're not talking about computer files that can be duplicated perfectly. 01:48:39.440 --> 01:48:42.720 Men had to sit there and write this stuff on longhand. 01:48:42.720 --> 01:48:45.680 It was incredibly arduous and expensive. 01:48:45.680 --> 01:48:47.760 It took a lot of care and skill. 01:48:47.920 --> 01:48:50.400 It took a lot of time and money, too. 01:48:50.400 --> 01:48:50.720 So 01:48:51.760 --> 01:48:56.080 Origin's task was that was self-appointed was I just want to straighten 01:48:56.080 --> 01:48:59.120 this out, I want to figure out what's going on, which of 01:48:59.120 --> 01:49:01.280 these Greek texts is the best. 01:49:01.280 --> 01:49:05.600 And he opened the door to consulting the Hebrew, which in effect 01:49:05.680 --> 01:49:10.000 hadn't been done previously, with one exception. 01:49:10.000 --> 01:49:13.520 Prior to origin, around two hundred forty AD, there was a man 01:49:13.520 --> 01:49:18.560 named Theodosian, who was not a Jew by race, but he converted 01:49:18.560 --> 01:49:24.960 into Judaism after the ascension of Christ, somewhere around 50 AD. 01:49:24.960 --> 01:49:30.960 He became Christian and he at some point translated another another copy 01:49:31.200 --> 01:49:34.320 of the existing Hebrew text that he could get his hands on 01:49:34.560 --> 01:49:35.600 into Greek. 01:49:35.600 --> 01:49:38.960 So he basically made his own personal Septuagint. 01:49:38.960 --> 01:49:41.200 And this is called Theodosians. 01:49:41.200 --> 01:49:44.320 And it doesn't exist today, but there are bits and pieces floating 01:49:44.320 --> 01:49:48.640 around. What's interesting about him is which makes him more than trivia, 01:49:48.640 --> 01:49:55.600 Theodosian's version of the book of Daniel ended up in those unseals 01:49:55.680 --> 01:49:57.040 that I talked about. 01:49:57.040 --> 01:50:02.640 By Origins Day, for reasons that we don't actually know, pretty much 01:50:02.640 --> 01:50:08.320 everyone in the early church had rejected the Septuagint version, which is 01:50:08.320 --> 01:50:13.040 called the Old Greek or the OG version for Theodosians. 01:50:13.040 --> 01:50:17.280 So we have here is the original Septuagint translated from Hebrew into 01:50:17.280 --> 01:50:20.000 Greek before the birth of Christ. 01:50:20.000 --> 01:50:23.600 After Christ is murdered by the Jews and is raised from the 01:50:23.600 --> 01:50:28.160 dead, after the church is born at Pentecost, Theodosian comes along, makes 01:50:28.160 --> 01:50:29.680 a fresh translation. 01:50:29.680 --> 01:50:32.400 It's speculated that he may have been a Gnostic before he became 01:50:32.400 --> 01:50:36.800 a Jew, but he converted into Judaism As they were celebrating killing 01:50:36.800 --> 01:50:41.920 Christ. And so I want to reiterate something that Corey said, I 01:50:41.920 --> 01:50:45.680 think probably in the Hebrews Israelites and Jews episode. 01:50:45.680 --> 01:50:48.800 There is a prayer of the Jews that originated right at the 01:50:49.360 --> 01:50:52.560 time of the destruction of the second temple. 01:50:52.560 --> 01:50:54.800 It's called the Brakat Hamanim. 01:50:54.800 --> 01:50:58.320 I'm just going to read you a portion of it against heretics. 01:50:58.320 --> 01:51:00.880 This is a prayer that was prayed multiple times a day by 01:51:00.880 --> 01:51:05.840 every faithful Jew at the time that this man became a Jew. 01:51:05.840 --> 01:51:09.680 The prayer that these Jews and they continued until this day in 01:51:09.680 --> 01:51:13.760 some form pray, for the apostates, let there be no hope, and 01:51:13.760 --> 01:51:17.600 uproot the kingdom of arrogance speedily and in our days, may the 01:51:17.600 --> 01:51:21.280 Nazarenes and their sectarians perish as in a moment. 01:51:21.280 --> 01:51:23.680 Let them be blotted out of the book of life and not 01:51:23.680 --> 01:51:25.440 be written together with the righteous. 01:51:25.440 --> 01:51:29.120 Your praised, O Satan, who subdues the arrogant. 01:51:29.120 --> 01:51:32.560 Now the only word of this I've changed is Lord to Satan, 01:51:32.560 --> 01:51:35.840 because they wrote this after having murdered Christ. 01:51:35.840 --> 01:51:39.920 It is Christian doctrine that every Jew from that point on could 01:51:39.920 --> 01:51:42.240 only possibly be praying to Satan. 01:51:42.240 --> 01:51:44.880 And part of the reason that they made this change and they 01:51:44.880 --> 01:51:49.360 made this liturgical practice in the temple and in their synagogues, because 01:51:49.360 --> 01:51:54.240 prior to the destruction of the temple, Christians, including Jewish converts to 01:51:54.240 --> 01:51:57.120 Christianity, were still meeting in the synagogues. 01:51:57.120 --> 01:52:00.560 They were gathering with those who had not yet accepted the word 01:52:00.640 --> 01:52:04.240 of God and the message of Christ and the gospel, as had 01:52:04.240 --> 01:52:07.760 been explicated from their own scriptures, but Christians and Jews were still 01:52:07.760 --> 01:52:11.840 meeting together because they were Jews ethnically, racially, who had converted to 01:52:11.840 --> 01:52:14.400 Christianity. But they're also going to the synagogue. 01:52:14.400 --> 01:52:17.280 This is recorded in the New Testament itself. 01:52:17.280 --> 01:52:20.560 And then also in the New Testament it's testified that eventually they 01:52:20.560 --> 01:52:22.720 started driving them out of the synagogues. 01:52:22.720 --> 01:52:26.400 This prayer, when it was concocted at the destruction of the Second 01:52:26.400 --> 01:52:30.960 Temple, ensured the Christians would be driven from the synagogues, because God 01:52:30.960 --> 01:52:32.320 just destroyed the temple. 01:52:32.320 --> 01:52:34.400 They couldn't have their sacrifices anymore. 01:52:34.400 --> 01:52:36.800 They couldn't do any of the temple worship. 01:52:36.800 --> 01:52:40.000 But they still gathered in synagogues, which was legal for them. 01:52:40.000 --> 01:52:43.360 They created this prayer that blasphemes God. 01:52:43.360 --> 01:52:46.880 When they say may the Nazarenes and the sectarians perish in a 01:52:46.880 --> 01:52:50.160 moment, what they're saying is may all the Christians die as soon 01:52:50.160 --> 01:52:51.120 as possible. 01:52:51.120 --> 01:52:53.120 And they prayed this multiple times a day. 01:52:53.120 --> 01:52:56.720 So Theodosian prayed this multiple times a day, and then he went 01:52:56.720 --> 01:53:00.400 to work translating from Hebrew into Greek. 01:53:00.400 --> 01:53:05.680 And for whatever reason that was accepted as the Daniel that's used 01:53:05.840 --> 01:53:11.360 even in the very earliest complete copies of an unseal that is 01:53:11.360 --> 01:53:12.880 entirely Greek. 01:53:12.880 --> 01:53:18.960 We do have the OG Daniel, and it's substantially different, which is 01:53:18.960 --> 01:53:21.840 interesting because Daniel is one of the only books in the Old 01:53:21.840 --> 01:53:26.480 Testament that's not entirely written in Hebrew, even by their own records. 01:53:26.480 --> 01:53:28.800 A portion of it's written only in Aramaic. 01:53:28.800 --> 01:53:31.280 There are a couple parts of the Old Testament that do not 01:53:31.280 --> 01:53:33.840 exist at all in Hebrew. 01:53:33.840 --> 01:53:35.680 They only exist in Aramaic. 01:53:35.680 --> 01:53:38.480 In Daniel was one, whereas a significant chunk of it was only 01:53:38.480 --> 01:53:39.600 in Aramaic. 01:53:39.600 --> 01:53:44.240 So we still to this day have extant copies of the original 01:53:44.240 --> 01:53:50.560 Greek Daniel, but the earliest versions of the completed scripture in Greek 01:53:50.560 --> 01:53:53.920 rejected them, and we don't know why, but we do know that 01:53:53.920 --> 01:53:58.640 they accepted a version of scripture based on Hebrew from a man 01:53:58.640 --> 01:54:02.480 who was a Gnostic and became someone who prayed this prayer asking 01:54:02.480 --> 01:54:04.000 for all Christians to be killed. 01:54:04.000 --> 01:54:04.960 And that's what we know. 01:54:04.960 --> 01:54:09.520 By Origin's day, when he made his hexapla, he includes the Theodosian 01:54:09.520 --> 01:54:11.840 side by side, 'cause it was it was one of the extant 01:54:11.840 --> 01:54:15.600 copies and it was floating around and people are arguing about it. 01:54:15.600 --> 01:54:20.480 And he comments that he doesn't know when the church accepted Theodosian's 01:54:20.480 --> 01:54:21.360 version of Daniel. 01:54:21.360 --> 01:54:24.800 So it was far enough before 240 that it was sort of 01:54:24.800 --> 01:54:26.080 already done. 01:54:26.160 --> 01:54:31.280 So even when we point to these unseals that are complete copies 01:54:31.280 --> 01:54:34.880 of the Greek Old and New Testament, and they do have minor 01:54:34.880 --> 01:54:38.400 differences between them, it's not like it's settled just because we narrow 01:54:38.400 --> 01:54:43.840 down our textual basis for what a future translation would look like. 01:54:43.840 --> 01:54:46.880 We even still have a question of what will we do in 01:54:46.880 --> 01:54:50.000 the future with the old Greek or the OG Daniel. 01:54:50.000 --> 01:54:54.240 Personally, I find it highly suspect that Theodosian's version was used instead. 01:54:54.240 --> 01:54:57.360 We We don't have access to their arguments, but we do have 01:54:57.360 --> 01:54:59.040 access to the text. 01:54:59.040 --> 01:55:02.960 So at some point in the future, completely separate from these conversations, 01:55:02.960 --> 01:55:05.200 we'll have to figure that out. 01:55:05.200 --> 01:55:07.760 One of the other things that Origin did, in addition to creating 01:55:07.760 --> 01:55:11.200 the hexaple, which was one of his greatest works, greatest in terms 01:55:11.200 --> 01:55:15.440 of scope, he stirred up a ton of controversy in other teachings, 01:55:15.440 --> 01:55:18.160 and there was a great deal of controversy after his death about 01:55:18.160 --> 01:55:21.840 some of his beliefs and teachings One of the things that he 01:55:21.840 --> 01:55:26.960 introduced into the Christian church that hadn't really existed, and certainly to 01:55:26.960 --> 01:55:33.520 the same degree, was copying another Hellenistic Jew named Philo of Alexandria. 01:55:33.520 --> 01:55:37.760 Philo's goal was to reconcile Jewish scripture in the first century. 01:55:37.760 --> 01:55:40.960 He was born about 20 BC and died 50 AD. 01:55:40.960 --> 01:55:42.640 So he was a Jew his entire life. 01:55:42.640 --> 01:55:43.920 He remained a Jew. 01:55:43.920 --> 01:55:44.880 He's damned. 01:55:44.880 --> 01:55:46.640 He rejected Christ. 01:55:46.640 --> 01:55:52.240 He wanted to reconcile the Hebrew scriptures with Greek philosophy, especially Platonism. 01:55:52.240 --> 01:55:57.600 And so what Philo did was significantly push the notion of allegorical 01:55:57.600 --> 01:55:58.800 readings of scripture. 01:55:58.800 --> 01:56:01.040 And you begin to see this in Origin, you see it in 01:56:01.040 --> 01:56:04.160 Jerome, and it really took off significantly at that time and it 01:56:04.160 --> 01:56:05.840 really kind of went away later. 01:56:05.840 --> 01:56:09.680 But when you read these early church fathers, some of what they 01:56:09.680 --> 01:56:12.800 write is really odd because they're so allegorical. 01:56:12.800 --> 01:56:17.840 They basically almost reject the text as any sort of literal basis, 01:56:17.840 --> 01:56:21.280 and they just want to find layers of meaning, which was a 01:56:21.280 --> 01:56:22.640 very Jewish thing. 01:56:22.640 --> 01:56:26.800 And he got it from Philo, even though Philo was himself doing 01:56:26.800 --> 01:56:29.200 it in the inspiration of Plato. 01:56:29.200 --> 01:56:31.840 So you know, we talk about the genealogy of ideas, you have 01:56:31.840 --> 01:56:36.160 these layers building up, and if there's someone taking things in a 01:56:36.160 --> 01:56:40.400 slightly bad direction, you can get wildly off cars later just because 01:56:40.880 --> 01:56:46.160 someone like Origen listened to someone like Philo who rejected Christ and 01:56:46.160 --> 01:56:50.720 introduced Platonism in a way that maybe other Christian thinkers wouldn't have. 01:56:51.600 --> 01:56:56.320 So this is the first moment where this the early church doesn't 01:56:56.240 --> 01:56:58.000 suddenly start adopting Hebrew. 01:56:58.000 --> 01:56:59.600 There was no notion of that. 01:56:59.600 --> 01:57:02.320 Origin's specific goal was twofold. 01:57:02.320 --> 01:57:06.880 One, he wanted to just harmonize all these floating Greek copies of 01:57:06.880 --> 01:57:10.000 the scriptures because they were they're kind of all over the place. 01:57:10.000 --> 01:57:12.800 And he wanted to compare it to the Hebrew that he had 01:57:12.800 --> 01:57:14.880 access to to see what was going on. 01:57:14.880 --> 01:57:17.920 Because if it was a translation, let's match and see what we 01:57:17.920 --> 01:57:20.400 have. But it didn't shift thinking. 01:57:20.400 --> 01:57:22.960 It simply opened the door that well maybe we need to consult 01:57:22.960 --> 01:57:24.080 the Hebrew. 01:57:24.080 --> 01:57:27.360 And that's something that comes up later with Jerome, and then we 01:57:27.360 --> 01:57:30.480 get off to the races in the second millennium, which will be 01:57:30.480 --> 01:57:31.920 next week's episode. 01:57:31.920 --> 01:57:35.440 But just remember that if Origin had not opened the door to 01:57:35.440 --> 01:57:38.720 looking at Hebrew, we don't know who would have done it, and 01:57:38.720 --> 01:57:39.760 Origin as well. 01:57:39.760 --> 01:57:42.800 Origin had to go talk to a ton of rabbis in order 01:57:42.800 --> 01:57:46.240 to learn Hebrew because in the church that wasn't done. 01:57:46.240 --> 01:57:47.520 People weren't learning Hebrew. 01:57:47.520 --> 01:57:48.400 They didn't know it. 01:57:48.400 --> 01:57:50.320 They didn't know how to read it or write it. 01:57:50.320 --> 01:57:54.080 So Origen himself had to go talk to rabbis who were saying 01:57:54.080 --> 01:57:54.960 this prayer. 01:57:54.960 --> 01:57:58.240 They're saying a prayer, May the Nazarenes and the Sectarians die in 01:57:58.240 --> 01:57:59.280 a moment. 01:57:59.280 --> 01:58:02.640 You know, I said earlier they that prayer is directed to Satan. 01:58:02.640 --> 01:58:05.600 Some of you probably got upset that let me just quote you 01:58:05.840 --> 01:58:09.280 a few passages from scripture that lay that case out so that 01:58:09.520 --> 01:58:12.160 yeah you can still be mad at me but you'll have to 01:58:12.160 --> 01:58:14.560 have Jesus in the room when we do it. 01:58:14.560 --> 01:58:17.360 Jesus says in John fourteen, I am the way, the truth and 01:58:17.360 --> 01:58:20.880 the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. 01:58:20.880 --> 01:58:24.080 Can a Jew after the destruction of the temple who's praying for 01:58:24.080 --> 01:58:27.840 the Nazarenes to die in a moment, be coming to the Father 01:58:27.840 --> 01:58:28.720 with his prayer? 01:58:28.720 --> 01:58:31.680 No. He can only possibly be praying to Satan. 01:58:31.680 --> 01:58:34.720 And first John two it is written, Who is the liar, but 01:58:34.720 --> 01:58:37.120 he who denies Jesus is the Christ? 01:58:37.120 --> 01:58:40.880 This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 01:58:40.880 --> 01:58:43.840 No one who denies the Son has the Father. 01:58:43.840 --> 01:58:46.640 Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. 01:58:46.720 --> 01:58:49.360 And so on that basis I change that prayer to say they're 01:58:49.280 --> 01:58:52.400 not saying you are praised, O God, who subdues the arrogant. 01:58:52.400 --> 01:58:53.600 They're praying to Satan. 01:58:53.600 --> 01:58:56.400 They cannot possibly direct their prayer to God because God does not 01:58:56.400 --> 01:58:57.440 hear their prayers. 01:58:57.440 --> 01:58:58.800 And frankly they know it. 01:58:59.360 --> 01:59:02.880 In first Corinthians ten is written, the sacrifices of pagans are offered 01:59:02.880 --> 01:59:04.800 to demons, not to God. 01:59:04.800 --> 01:59:07.600 I do not want you to be participants with demons. 01:59:07.600 --> 01:59:11.280 There is no greater participation with demons than the Jewish prayer that 01:59:11.280 --> 01:59:13.600 is not directed to God Almighty. 01:59:13.600 --> 01:59:16.160 They do not have God the Father because they do not have 01:59:16.160 --> 01:59:17.120 the Son. 01:59:17.120 --> 01:59:19.680 They murdered him, they reject him to this day. 01:59:19.680 --> 01:59:23.360 And the fact that ever since the destruction of the temple, we 01:59:23.360 --> 01:59:27.120 have these early church fathers, even men in good conscience going to 01:59:27.120 --> 01:59:31.600 rabbis who blaspheme Christ to say explain God to me is the 01:59:31.600 --> 01:59:34.080 genesis of the problems that plague us today. 01:59:34.080 --> 01:59:36.160 So Origin made a small mistake. 01:59:36.160 --> 01:59:37.120 It wasn't a big deal. 01:59:37.120 --> 01:59:40.000 He didn't Judaize the entire church in a moment. 01:59:40.000 --> 01:59:42.720 Satan was content to let this just sit and lie for a 01:59:42.720 --> 01:59:46.640 while, but he opened the door because he reintroduced Hebrew where it 01:59:46.640 --> 01:59:47.920 had been completely lost. 01:59:47.920 --> 01:59:51.520 He said, Wow, we have all these Greek copies flying around, rather 01:59:51.520 --> 01:59:55.120 than just comparing the Greek to each other, he compared the Hebrew 01:59:55.120 --> 01:59:56.000 as well. 01:59:56.000 --> 01:59:58.800 I wish to God that he had never done that because had 01:59:58.800 --> 02:00:01.680 that door not been opened, who knows how much better off we 02:00:01.680 --> 02:00:04.080 would be today. 02:00:04.080 --> 02:00:04.480 And And 02:00:04.480 --> 02:00:08.640 so the next step in this narrative is indeed as Mo mention 02:00:08.800 --> 02:00:15.600 Jerome. Because it is really Jerome's translation that truly starts the use 02:00:15.600 --> 02:00:19.440 of Hebrew, restarts the use of Hebrew 02:00:20.720 --> 02:00:23.440 in the actual church. 02:00:23.440 --> 02:00:30.800 Prior to Jerome's translation, there was an existing old translation into 02:00:31.120 --> 02:00:32.960 Latin from the Septuagint. 02:00:32.960 --> 02:00:38.080 That was the Vetus Latina, which is just the old Latin translation. 02:00:38.080 --> 02:00:43.280 Jerome was commissioned by the Pope to produce an updated Latin translation 02:00:43.680 --> 02:00:49.520 Now, Jerome had already had some interaction with rabbis from this time, 02:00:49.520 --> 02:00:53.120 and so he had some knowledge of Hebrew. 02:00:53.120 --> 02:00:57.200 In order to increase his knowledge of Hebrew, because he felt that 02:00:57.200 --> 02:01:01.280 was something he should do in order to translate the Old Testament, 02:01:01.280 --> 02:01:06.000 he spent about fifteen years in and around Jerusalem. 02:01:06.000 --> 02:01:11.440 So during his time in Jerusalem, learning from Jews, learning the Hebrew 02:01:11.440 --> 02:01:17.840 language from them, he is dealing with men who have explicitly rejected 02:01:17.840 --> 02:01:22.240 Christ. Because bear in mind we are now dealing at the end 02:01:22.240 --> 02:01:26.880 of the three hundreds, not BC, but AD. 02:01:26.880 --> 02:01:33.200 Centuries after Christ's ministry on earth, these are Jews descended from Jews 02:01:33.280 --> 02:01:38.240 descended from Jews, all of whom rejected Christ and prayed daily 02:01:39.440 --> 02:01:42.960 for Christians to be destroyed, and for the church of Christ to 02:01:42.960 --> 02:01:44.800 be destroyed. 02:01:44.800 --> 02:01:50.320 And Jerome went to these men to learn how to translate Scripture. 02:01:50.320 --> 02:01:56.320 In fact, it is seemingly from these men that Jerome obtained the 02:01:56.320 --> 02:01:59.920 Hebrew text that he used in order to translate Scripture. 02:01:59.920 --> 02:02:03.760 We don't have access to what he used, so we don't actually 02:02:03.760 --> 02:02:08.400 know for certain which Hebrew sources he used in his translation. 02:02:08.400 --> 02:02:12.400 It may have been some proto-version of the Masoretic text, but we 02:02:12.400 --> 02:02:15.920 have no way of knowing, because those were not preserved. 02:02:15.920 --> 02:02:19.680 In fact, when Saint Augustine asked him for some of his resources, 02:02:19.680 --> 02:02:23.600 he gave various excuses as to why he could not provide them, 02:02:23.600 --> 02:02:26.080 one being that he said he didn't have a sufficient number of 02:02:26.080 --> 02:02:29.200 scrib have hand to do so. 02:02:29.200 --> 02:02:36.640 And incidentally, in his correspondence with Augustine, Augustine urged him to maintain 02:02:36.720 --> 02:02:40.880 the historical and traditional usage of the Septuagint. 02:02:41.360 --> 02:02:44.400 It was Jerome who decided not to do that. 02:02:44.400 --> 02:02:48.640 Jerome, in his consultation with rabbis, decided that he should use the 02:02:48.640 --> 02:02:52.400 Hebrew. Whatever it happened to be. 02:02:52.400 --> 02:02:57.920 And so in his translation that became the Vulgate, he used Hebrew 02:02:57.920 --> 02:03:02.560 and some Greek and also reference the older Latin version. 02:03:02.560 --> 02:03:06.640 But it was in fact Jerome who introduced this usage of the 02:03:06.640 --> 02:03:11.920 Hebrew as a source for the translation of the Old Testament. 02:03:11.920 --> 02:03:16.000 And this is the beginning of the usage of Hebrew. 02:03:16.000 --> 02:03:20.640 It is the entry of Hebrew back into the church. 02:03:20.640 --> 02:03:24.640 But as we laid out earlier in this episode, this is not 02:03:24.640 --> 02:03:26.000 biblical Hebrew. 02:03:26.000 --> 02:03:27.920 This is not ancient Hebrew. 02:03:27.920 --> 02:03:29.520 That was not maintained. 02:03:29.520 --> 02:03:32.480 That was lost because God destroyed it. 02:03:32.480 --> 02:03:34.480 This is something else. 02:03:34.480 --> 02:03:39.040 This is something that was produced by rabbis in Jerusalem and the 02:03:39.040 --> 02:03:43.120 surrounding territory, and then passed off to Christians as if it were 02:03:43.120 --> 02:03:44.240 the word of God. 02:03:45.360 --> 02:03:50.000 And slowly but surely over the ensuing centuries, it would replace the 02:03:50.000 --> 02:03:51.680 use of the Greek. 02:03:51.680 --> 02:03:56.480 Obviously, much more quickly after the Great Schism, because then you have 02:03:56.480 --> 02:04:00.720 that divide between the Eastern and the Western Church, and Satan used 02:04:00.720 --> 02:04:07.600 that in order to entrench Hebrew, because he used the animosity between 02:04:07.600 --> 02:04:13.280 the Greek speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, in order to entrench 02:04:13.280 --> 02:04:18.000 this new version of the Latin, the Vulgate, with its Old Testament 02:04:18.240 --> 02:04:20.160 based on Hebrew. 02:04:23.520 --> 02:04:28.800 To be fair to Jerome, we are not saying that Jerome was 02:04:28.800 --> 02:04:31.280 an entirely faithless man. 02:04:31.280 --> 02:04:37.600 We're not saying that Jerome was apostate or actively wicked. 02:04:37.600 --> 02:04:40.880 There may have been some of that in some cases, it is 02:04:40.960 --> 02:04:43.280 a wisdom call on that count. 02:04:43.280 --> 02:04:46.480 What we are saying is that Jerome was deceived. 02:04:46.480 --> 02:04:51.840 Jerome was led to believe that it is the Hebrew, so called, 02:04:51.840 --> 02:04:55.280 that is the proper basis of the Old Testament, and then he 02:04:55.280 --> 02:05:00.960 foolishly went and spent a decade and a half dealing with rabbis. 02:05:00.960 --> 02:05:04.800 That is not something that Christians should be doing. 02:05:04.800 --> 02:05:09.040 You do not go to the men who murdered the Lord Christ, 02:05:09.040 --> 02:05:14.240 who daily blaspheme him, who daily curse Christians, who daily curse the 02:05:14.240 --> 02:05:19.760 Church of Christ, and ask them to interpret scripture for you. 02:05:19.760 --> 02:05:22.480 This is in fact one of the central points that we are 02:05:22.480 --> 02:05:24.560 making in this series. 02:05:24.560 --> 02:05:29.680 One of the fundamental problems with Hebrew is that ask almost any 02:05:29.680 --> 02:05:34.720 pastor who has learned Hebrew, and he will praise rabbis, because he 02:05:34.720 --> 02:05:37.920 will say that we go to rabbis to ask them how to 02:05:37.920 --> 02:05:40.640 understand these difficult passages of scripture. 02:05:40.640 --> 02:05:46.160 We go to rabbis to help us understand this Hebrew language. 02:05:46.160 --> 02:05:49.600 Any Christian should have the hairs on the back of his neck 02:05:49.760 --> 02:05:52.080 stand up on end when he hears that. 02:05:52.080 --> 02:05:55.840 You do not go to the sons of Satan to ask about 02:05:55.840 --> 02:05:57.600 the Son of God. 02:05:57.600 --> 02:06:02.240 That is exactly what is being done when Christians go to Jewish 02:06:02.240 --> 02:06:05.520 rabbis in order to learn about Scripture. 02:06:05.520 --> 02:06:08.560 What does Scripture say about itself to those who don't have the 02:06:08.560 --> 02:06:11.440 Spirit, which is to say those who are not Christians, which is 02:06:11.440 --> 02:06:14.320 to say in this instance Jews? 02:06:14.320 --> 02:06:17.520 It says they're blind, and they're deaf. 02:06:17.520 --> 02:06:22.160 They cannot see, they cannot hear, because Scripture is a closed book 02:06:22.160 --> 02:06:25.120 to those who do not have the Spirit. 02:06:25.120 --> 02:06:28.960 It is a denial of the Word of God to go to 02:06:28.960 --> 02:06:36.480 rabbis and ask them to interpret Scripture Because Scripture says they can't. 02:06:36.480 --> 02:06:41.600 We should not be using this text that they produced from somewhere 02:06:41.600 --> 02:06:45.040 and then passed off to Jerome, who then gave it to the 02:06:45.040 --> 02:06:48.240 Western Church as if as if it were scripture. 02:06:48.240 --> 02:06:53.200 Now again, as we've said, God miraculously preserved most of his word 02:06:53.440 --> 02:06:58.320 through that line, despite the evil intentions of the Jews. 02:06:58.320 --> 02:07:00.800 But we have a better text available. 02:07:01.040 --> 02:07:02.880 We have the Septuagint. 02:07:02.880 --> 02:07:06.000 We have the text that our forefathers in the faith used. 02:07:06.000 --> 02:07:08.560 That is the text that we should be using. 02:07:08.560 --> 02:07:14.480 Not this one that was given to us by wicked apostate Jews. 02:07:14.480 --> 02:07:17.200 This is again one of those instances where we're looking at the 02:07:17.200 --> 02:07:20.800 genealogy, in this case not just of an idea, but the provenance 02:07:20.800 --> 02:07:22.640 of an actual document. 02:07:22.640 --> 02:07:28.400 Incidentally, we don't know the exact provenance of what would become potentially 02:07:28.400 --> 02:07:33.440 the Masoretic text or whatever it was that predated it, that preceded 02:07:33.440 --> 02:07:36.560 it in the hands of these rabbis. 02:07:36.560 --> 02:07:38.640 But we know the source. 02:07:38.640 --> 02:07:42.240 We know that it was held by those who rejected Christ. 02:07:42.240 --> 02:07:45.680 We know that it was copied by those who rejected Christ. 02:07:45.680 --> 02:07:48.800 We know that it was edited by those who rejected Christ and 02:07:48.800 --> 02:07:52.960 then passed off by them to Christian men. 02:07:53.040 --> 02:07:57.040 On the other hand, we have the Septuagint, which was produced by 02:07:57.040 --> 02:08:00.640 those who were faithful, which was passed to those who were faithful, 02:08:00.640 --> 02:08:03.760 and then passed down by those who were faithful, and then used 02:08:03.760 --> 02:08:07.360 by those who were faithful to build the Church of Christ of 02:08:07.520 --> 02:08:11.200 Christ. This is not a difficult question. 02:08:11.200 --> 02:08:13.920 Now as we have said a number of times in this episode 02:08:14.000 --> 02:08:18.640 and will undoubtedly say in future episodes as well, it certainly produces 02:08:18.640 --> 02:08:20.000 some problems. 02:08:20.000 --> 02:08:23.920 This is not an easy thing to investigate, it's not an easy 02:08:23.920 --> 02:08:26.800 thing to teach. 02:08:26.800 --> 02:08:31.520 But when it comes to causing problems so called in the church, 02:08:32.160 --> 02:08:37.440 The issue always lies with those who are advancing a lie. 02:08:37.440 --> 02:08:40.480 The man who stands up and speaks the truth is not the 02:08:40.480 --> 02:08:43.440 one who is causing trouble in Christ's Church. 02:08:43.440 --> 02:08:47.040 It is those who are defending a lie. 02:08:47.040 --> 02:08:51.600 And in this case, the lie is that we need Hebrew in 02:08:51.600 --> 02:08:53.760 order to have the word of God. 02:08:53.760 --> 02:08:58.160 Because God rendered his judgment on the Hebrew language. 02:08:58.160 --> 02:09:01.760 God rendered his judgment on the Hebrew text, which again we don't 02:09:01.760 --> 02:09:04.320 even have, it was not preserved. 02:09:04.320 --> 02:09:07.360 God rendered his judgment on all of these things. 02:09:07.360 --> 02:09:09.520 They're dead and gone. 02:09:09.520 --> 02:09:11.680 He gave us the Greek. 02:09:11.680 --> 02:09:13.360 That is the word of God. 02:09:13.360 --> 02:09:15.760 That is the one we should defend. 02:09:15.760 --> 02:09:19.040 So when we stand up and defend the Septuagint, or when you 02:09:19.040 --> 02:09:21.840 stand up and defend the Septuagint if it falls to you to 02:09:21.840 --> 02:09:26.560 do so, we are not, and you are not, the ones or 02:09:26.560 --> 02:09:31.040 the one causing dissension or conflict in Christ Church. 02:09:31.040 --> 02:09:34.320 That was caused by those who failed to defend the things they 02:09:34.320 --> 02:09:38.080 should have defended and reject the things they should have rejected. 02:09:38.080 --> 02:09:40.800 Because as soon as a rabbi stands up and says, I can 02:09:40.800 --> 02:09:43.440 tell you about Christ, don't listen. 02:09:43.440 --> 02:09:45.600 Tell him to shut up, walk away. 02:09:45.600 --> 02:09:50.080 He has nothing to tell you that doesn't come from Satan. 02:09:50.240 --> 02:09:53.920 Even if what he happens to speak in that particular moment at 02:09:53.920 --> 02:09:56.800 that instant is true. 02:09:56.800 --> 02:10:00.080 He is a son of his father below, and he will eventually 02:10:00.560 --> 02:10:02.720 seek to mislead you. 02:10:02.720 --> 02:10:07.760 Because that's the whole reason he wants to start that interaction. 02:10:07.760 --> 02:10:12.880 The whole reason that Satan wanted Origen to wonder if maybe Hebrew 02:10:12.880 --> 02:10:17.280 is useful was so that Jerome would go and learn from rabbis, 02:10:17.280 --> 02:10:20.720 so that Jerome would use Hebrew in his translation of the Old 02:10:20.720 --> 02:10:26.160 Testament, so that everything that has flowed from that in subsequent centuries 02:10:26.400 --> 02:10:29.600 could be brought into and poisoned the churches. 02:10:29.600 --> 02:10:33.200 That is the reason that he did it. 02:10:33.200 --> 02:10:36.640 You don't give him the opening. 02:10:36.640 --> 02:10:41.680 As we've used in a number of previous episodes, the analogy of 02:10:41.680 --> 02:10:44.880 Satan as a snake is perfect. 02:10:45.040 --> 02:10:48.240 Is anyone who has dealt with snakes, and this would have immediately 02:10:48.240 --> 02:10:52.080 resonated with basically everyone down through history, except for those of us 02:10:52.080 --> 02:10:55.120 in the modern world usually don't have to deal with snakes, thankfully. 02:10:55.680 --> 02:11:00.320 But everyone knew if a snake can get his head into a 02:11:00.320 --> 02:11:03.040 place, the whole snake will follow. 02:11:03.040 --> 02:11:06.480 Perhaps these days it would be easier to compare cats for people 02:11:06.640 --> 02:11:09.600 because cats use their whiskers in the same way. 02:11:09.600 --> 02:11:14.160 If a cat's whiskers hits something when he is pushing his head 02:11:14.160 --> 02:11:16.560 through, he knows he may have trouble getting the rest of his 02:11:16.560 --> 02:11:16.960 body through. 02:11:17.200 --> 02:11:20.640 That's how cats tend to find their way and size things. 02:11:20.640 --> 02:11:22.880 Snakes do it with their head. 02:11:23.200 --> 02:11:24.880 Satan is a snake. 02:11:24.880 --> 02:11:28.640 If you give him an opening big enough for his head, the 02:11:28.640 --> 02:11:31.280 rest of the snake is going to follow in the fullness of 02:11:31.280 --> 02:11:32.000 time. 02:11:32.960 --> 02:11:36.400 That was the opening that was given to Satan as soon as 02:11:36.400 --> 02:11:43.440 Christians started consulting rabbis to use Hebrew, the language that God 02:11:43.440 --> 02:11:48.560 killed, the language that God did not preserve, the language that is 02:11:48.560 --> 02:11:52.640 not the language of God's word, because again the language of God's 02:11:52.640 --> 02:11:55.920 word is the Greek. 02:11:55.920 --> 02:12:00.720 I want to plug what Origen and Jerome did by consulting rabbis 02:12:00.720 --> 02:12:04.400 back into this timeline that we've laid out for you. 02:12:04.400 --> 02:12:08.320 By the time of the Maccabean Revolt, Hebrew was long dead. 02:12:08.320 --> 02:12:12.080 By the time of Jesus and the Apostles, all scripture was being 02:12:12.080 --> 02:12:14.640 read in Greek and taught from Greek. 02:12:14.640 --> 02:12:18.720 When Paul argued from the scriptures with the Jews and the synagogues, 02:12:18.720 --> 02:12:22.640 he used the Septuagint, 'cause it's the only thing they could understand. 02:12:22.640 --> 02:12:27.440 So So even the rabbis who rejected Christ, even those who murdered 02:12:27.440 --> 02:12:32.480 Christ, subscribed to the Greek, as Corey said earlier, it wasn't until 02:12:32.480 --> 02:12:36.480 Christ's death and resurrection, which was kind of a ruining moment for 02:12:36.480 --> 02:12:40.880 those people, when Christ was raised from the dead and ascended into 02:12:40.880 --> 02:12:46.960 heaven and Christianity took off, and the proselytization inside the synagogues was 02:12:46.960 --> 02:12:50.240 running wild, so they eventually had to throw the Christians out of 02:12:50.240 --> 02:12:52.720 the synagogues 'cause they were too successful. 02:12:52.720 --> 02:12:55.600 Because remember the among the Jews in that day there were those 02:12:55.600 --> 02:12:59.120 who hated Christ and continued, and there were the elect, who when 02:12:59.120 --> 02:13:01.440 they heard the word of God and they saw the miracles performed, 02:13:01.920 --> 02:13:02.800 they believed. 02:13:02.800 --> 02:13:05.520 Just like us, we hear the word of God and we believe 02:13:05.520 --> 02:13:06.880 because we are elect. 02:13:06.880 --> 02:13:10.320 They were Jews racially, they were Jews culturally, they heard the word 02:13:10.400 --> 02:13:12.320 of God and they became Christians. 02:13:12.320 --> 02:13:14.960 Crucially, they ceased to be Jews. 02:13:14.960 --> 02:13:20.240 They did not perpetuate their habits, their lifestyles, their language. 02:13:20.240 --> 02:13:21.520 None of it persisted. 02:13:21.520 --> 02:13:25.040 They just became the local Palestinian people in that place. 02:13:25.040 --> 02:13:29.920 And until the state of Israel has basically exterminated Christianity with America's 02:13:29.920 --> 02:13:33.840 help in this century, that was one of the oldest communities of 02:13:33.840 --> 02:13:36.880 Christians on the planet in existence. 02:13:36.880 --> 02:13:40.400 Those were originally Jews and they just intermixed, they didn't they ceased 02:13:40.400 --> 02:13:43.360 to be racial Jews, they were just Middle Easterners, they were Palestinians. 02:13:43.360 --> 02:13:44.240 But they're Christians 02:13:45.440 --> 02:13:51.040 because once you set aside the habits and the Mosaic Law, which 02:13:51.040 --> 02:13:56.400 Christ fulfilled perfectly, there's no more reason not to marry your neighbor 02:13:56.480 --> 02:14:01.040 who is your cousin, who is, you know, not racially Jewish, but 02:14:01.040 --> 02:14:03.600 they're all basically the same there. 02:14:03.600 --> 02:14:09.200 After the destruction of the temple, when the Jews were on the 02:14:09.200 --> 02:14:13.040 warpath and were continuing to kill Christians, or the first thing they 02:14:13.040 --> 02:14:15.520 did after killing Christ, one of the first things was to murder 02:14:15.520 --> 02:14:19.040 Stephen. And Paul had been active in doing that. 02:14:19.040 --> 02:14:20.880 He was proudly going around murdering Christians. 02:14:21.600 --> 02:14:23.920 This was sport for the Jews. 02:14:23.920 --> 02:14:28.160 These people, after the destruction of the temple, began to push back 02:14:28.160 --> 02:14:32.240 towards saying, hey, we need to get rid of this Greek stuff 02:14:32.480 --> 02:14:34.240 because it's been causing problems. 02:14:34.240 --> 02:14:37.760 Incidentally, just like the Maccabeans said during the revolt, that was one 02:14:37.760 --> 02:14:40.720 of the reasons for the revolt was Hellenization. 02:14:40.720 --> 02:14:44.000 And they were right, it was going to ultimately end Jews in 02:14:44.000 --> 02:14:49.440 Judaism. There's nothing left anymore, because that was God's decree. 02:14:49.440 --> 02:14:52.080 The return to Hebrew was in intent. 02:14:52.080 --> 02:14:55.200 It was something that we saw in the Bar Kokhbal revolt around 02:14:55.200 --> 02:14:56.640 one hundred thirty five. 02:14:56.640 --> 02:15:00.240 But it still took them a while to begin to actually even 02:15:00.240 --> 02:15:02.560 have anything liturgically. 02:15:02.560 --> 02:15:07.440 But what happened after this was the writing down of the Talmud 02:15:07.600 --> 02:15:11.840 mostly in Aramaic, and some in Greek incidentally, and bits in Hebrew 02:15:11.840 --> 02:15:14.080 that were older. 02:15:14.080 --> 02:15:18.960 When Origen laid down those translations of Greek and then he put 02:15:18.960 --> 02:15:22.240 the Hebrew side by side, one of his reasons I I forgot 02:15:22.240 --> 02:15:24.000 to mention earlier, one of his reasons was 02:15:25.040 --> 02:15:28.000 apologetics against the Jews of his day. 02:15:28.000 --> 02:15:33.760 Because in a Christian environment, the rabbis realized that the Greek was 02:15:33.760 --> 02:15:35.600 a big problem for them. 02:15:35.600 --> 02:15:39.280 And so one of the things that they did, despite just two, 02:15:39.280 --> 02:15:44.400 three generations previously having accepted the Greek Septuagint as the inspired word 02:15:44.480 --> 02:15:46.560 of God, they now rejected it. 02:15:46.560 --> 02:15:49.360 So when a Christian came to them with the Greek Bible, they 02:15:49.360 --> 02:15:51.040 said, no, I I reject that. 02:15:51.040 --> 02:15:52.720 The original is in Hebrew. 02:15:52.720 --> 02:15:56.080 Come learn Hebrew with me, and then we can discuss scripture as 02:15:56.080 --> 02:15:57.200 it was given to us. 02:15:57.200 --> 02:15:58.720 That was complete BS. 02:15:58.720 --> 02:16:00.480 That was a total LARP. 02:16:00.480 --> 02:16:03.920 It never happened, but they lied and people fell for it. 02:16:04.160 --> 02:16:08.720 See, there's no continuity of the Hebrew language even in that day. 02:16:08.720 --> 02:16:11.040 There's a reason the Apocrypha is all Greek. 02:16:11.040 --> 02:16:13.280 It's because Hebrew was killed. 02:16:13.280 --> 02:16:14.560 God let it happen. 02:16:14.560 --> 02:16:15.920 God did it. 02:16:15.920 --> 02:16:18.400 And so by the time of origin, when part of the reason 02:16:18.400 --> 02:16:21.600 he lays down Hebrew is so he can argue with Jews who 02:16:21.600 --> 02:16:23.680 are gonna reject all the other Greek versions. 02:16:23.680 --> 02:16:26.480 One of the purposes of the hexapla was to say, look, the 02:16:26.480 --> 02:16:28.880 Greek is consistent with the Hebrew, but he had to put it 02:16:28.880 --> 02:16:30.880 side by side so he could show, you know, which of Which 02:16:30.880 --> 02:16:33.680 of those four versions it was floating around was better. 02:16:33.680 --> 02:16:39.200 And incidentally, when Pope Damasc I commissioned Jerome initially to come up 02:16:39.200 --> 02:16:42.480 with a new Latin translation of the Bible, initially the focus was 02:16:42.480 --> 02:16:46.960 just on the Gospels, but the goal that Jerome was given was 02:16:46.960 --> 02:16:51.360 to solve the problem of the old Latin that was floating around, 02:16:51.360 --> 02:16:54.320 the Weddus Latina, as Corey said. 02:16:54.320 --> 02:16:57.200 There was not a single version of a Latin translation. 02:16:57.200 --> 02:17:00.800 There were a bunch floating around, more than there were of Greek 02:17:00.800 --> 02:17:03.840 translations, and they were not inspired. 02:17:03.840 --> 02:17:06.000 So that some of them were pretty bad and it was causing 02:17:06.000 --> 02:17:08.800 scandal and it was causing fights in the church. 02:17:08.800 --> 02:17:12.160 So the Pope was solving the right problem, saying, hey, let's have 02:17:12.160 --> 02:17:16.640 an officially commissioned Latin version of the Bible, since increasingly people can't 02:17:16.640 --> 02:17:17.520 read Greek. 02:17:17.520 --> 02:17:19.840 Let's translate it into Latin so we can all be on the 02:17:19.840 --> 02:17:20.640 same page. 02:17:20.640 --> 02:17:25.040 That was a perfectly correct order from this pope. 02:17:25.040 --> 02:17:28.480 What happened was as Corey said Jerome is like no no no 02:17:28.560 --> 02:17:30.640 I need to go talk to the rabbis that I already know 02:17:30.800 --> 02:17:33.520 and they're helping really improve my learning. 02:17:33.520 --> 02:17:36.160 So he went off on his own and decided he wanted to 02:17:36.160 --> 02:17:37.360 resort to the Hebrew. 02:17:37.360 --> 02:17:40.160 That was not his command, and it was a scandal when he 02:17:40.160 --> 02:17:40.880 did it. 02:17:40.880 --> 02:17:45.520 Augustine sent him numerous letters, which he ignored for about twenty years, 02:17:45.520 --> 02:17:49.520 saying it look, you're stirring up dissent, you're confusing people. 02:17:49.520 --> 02:17:54.560 One of Augustine's objections to Jerome at that time, which is a 02:17:54.560 --> 02:17:58.000 valid concern, and one that we have to this day, is spreading 02:17:58.000 --> 02:18:04.320 confusion. And unfortunately, simply racing this question is going to spread confusion. 02:18:04.320 --> 02:18:08.880 It's a tragic but necessary part of telling the truth when things 02:18:08.880 --> 02:18:10.080 have gone awry. 02:18:10.080 --> 02:18:13.520 So as Corey said, it's not that someone who asks questions about 02:18:13.840 --> 02:18:19.840 the Septuagint is causing dissension, but rather the dissension began in the 02:18:19.840 --> 02:18:24.560 second and third and fourth centuries when these guys, with no warrant 02:18:24.560 --> 02:18:28.320 from Christ or from the prophets or from the apostles, went to 02:18:28.320 --> 02:18:33.200 Jews, rabbis specifically, and said teach us Hebrew so we can bypass 02:18:33.200 --> 02:18:35.840 the scripture of Jesus and the apostles and we can get down 02:18:35.840 --> 02:18:36.880 to the real thing. 02:18:36.880 --> 02:18:38.560 That's what it boils down to. 02:18:38.560 --> 02:18:41.360 And crucially, the other thing from the timeline that you have to 02:18:41.360 --> 02:18:46.000 remember, Hebrew in Jerome's day was not a written language. 02:18:46.000 --> 02:18:47.840 It was an oral tradition. 02:18:47.840 --> 02:18:51.280 What they had written did not have the vows, the only way 02:18:51.280 --> 02:18:53.840 to read it was to talk to a rabbi. 02:18:53.840 --> 02:18:58.160 It was exclusively by oral tradition that the text that was given 02:18:58.160 --> 02:19:00.640 to Jerome could have been transmitted. 02:19:00.640 --> 02:19:03.120 He had to sit there with a rabbi, not just being taught 02:19:03.120 --> 02:19:07.120 Hebrew, but being But being taught every word in the Old Testament. 02:19:07.120 --> 02:19:10.000 Because without vowels, you can't just look at it and read it. 02:19:10.000 --> 02:19:12.480 That was the entire reason for the Masoretic text that we're going 02:19:12.480 --> 02:19:14.000 to finish up with. 02:19:14.000 --> 02:19:17.760 Before the inclusion of vowel pointers and the other things that made 02:19:17.760 --> 02:19:21.920 it a complete written language for the first time in history, at 02:19:21.920 --> 02:19:25.680 least with the Aramaic script, it was necessary to have a Christ 02:19:25.840 --> 02:19:27.280 killer explain what it said. 02:19:27.280 --> 02:19:32.640 And so when Origin went to rabbis, when Theodosian himself translated, when 02:19:32.640 --> 02:19:37.680 Jerome went to rabbis, everyone involved in giving the Hebrew to these 02:19:37.680 --> 02:19:41.760 people was wicked, was a Satan worshiper. 02:19:41.760 --> 02:19:45.840 And we are using them as the basis for our scripture today. 02:19:45.840 --> 02:19:49.680 Now, as I said earlier, it doesn't matter if every word matches 02:19:49.680 --> 02:19:50.720 word for word. 02:19:50.720 --> 02:19:54.160 It honestly doesn't matter because the Greek is what we were given 02:19:54.160 --> 02:19:55.520 by God. 02:19:55.520 --> 02:20:00.640 But When you do look, you find sometimes substantial differences. 02:20:00.640 --> 02:20:08.080 And the other crucial mistake that Jerome entered into the Christian lexicon, 02:20:08.080 --> 02:20:09.680 for which I can never forgive him. 02:20:09.680 --> 02:20:12.640 This is one of the most evil things ever said in human 02:20:12.640 --> 02:20:19.440 history. Was an entirely reasonable intellectual argument that, well, the Septuagint in 02:20:19.440 --> 02:20:24.480 Greek is a translation from an earlier source from a Hebrew forelaga, 02:20:24.480 --> 02:20:28.320 I want to return to the pure spring, because what I have 02:20:28.320 --> 02:20:30.240 in front of me is a muddied water. 02:20:30.240 --> 02:20:32.800 That's essentially the analogy that Jerome made. 02:20:32.800 --> 02:20:35.680 And has been repeated by everyone ever since. 02:20:35.680 --> 02:20:39.520 And he called it the Hebraica Weritas the truth of Hebrew, or 02:20:39.520 --> 02:20:40.960 the Hebrew truth. 02:20:40.960 --> 02:20:43.520 The only way to get to the truth of Scripture according to 02:20:43.520 --> 02:20:47.040 Jerome was to bypass the Greek entirely and go to the Hebrew 02:20:47.040 --> 02:20:48.720 because it was older. 02:20:48.720 --> 02:20:51.840 Is that true if you believe what we've said about Jesus and 02:20:51.840 --> 02:20:52.720 the apostles? 02:20:52.720 --> 02:20:53.760 It can't be. 02:20:53.760 --> 02:20:55.280 They quoted it as scripture. 02:20:55.280 --> 02:20:57.200 They said it was breathed out by God. 02:20:57.200 --> 02:21:01.440 At no point in the entire New Testament does anyone say we 02:21:01.440 --> 02:21:05.120 have to learn Hebrew in order to preserve scripture? 02:21:05.120 --> 02:21:07.440 You won't find anything of the sort. 02:21:07.440 --> 02:21:12.160 On the contrary, you're going to find practically entire books dedicated to 02:21:12.160 --> 02:21:14.320 lamb basing Judaizing. 02:21:14.320 --> 02:21:18.480 This is the Judaizing heresy for which we did an entire episode. 02:21:18.480 --> 02:21:21.840 To say I can't know God unless I talk to a Christ 02:21:21.920 --> 02:21:27.520 murdering rabbi is it's blasphemous and it's insane. 02:21:27.520 --> 02:21:30.240 And it's not even substantiated by history. 02:21:30.240 --> 02:21:34.800 Jerome Origin wanted to argue with Jews about Scripture, and the bait 02:21:34.800 --> 02:21:37.600 ever since has been, oh well, if we can argue with them 02:21:37.600 --> 02:21:40.160 in Hebrew, we can convert them. 02:21:40.160 --> 02:21:43.920 Remember this from episode eight of Stone Choir we did an episode 02:21:43.920 --> 02:21:48.240 on the neglected matters, and one of them was Christ's command to 02:21:48.240 --> 02:21:50.320 shake the dust off your feet. 02:21:50.320 --> 02:21:52.960 I'm gonna read a couple of those passages and I want you 02:21:52.960 --> 02:21:56.480 to compare it to what's been done here in church history with 02:21:56.480 --> 02:21:58.480 regard to the Greek and the Hebrew. 02:21:58.480 --> 02:22:02.320 In Mark six, Jesus says, And if any place will not receive 02:22:02.320 --> 02:22:05.280 you and they will not listen to you, when you leave shake 02:22:05.280 --> 02:22:08.400 off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against 02:22:08.960 --> 02:22:14.480 them. Now testimony here is a particular Greco Roman concept, the word 02:22:14.480 --> 02:22:18.160 that was used, had to do establishing a legal fact. 02:22:18.160 --> 02:22:22.080 So testimony against them is not simply a curse, which it was, 02:22:22.080 --> 02:22:24.960 but it was establishing the fact that God curses these people in 02:22:24.960 --> 02:22:25.920 this place. 02:22:25.920 --> 02:22:30.800 Christ commanded that of anyone who would reject his gospel. 02:22:30.800 --> 02:22:32.880 And as we point out in that episode, there are only two 02:22:33.120 --> 02:22:36.000 examples in scripture of being done, and then it just vanishes. 02:22:36.160 --> 02:22:38.720 We couldn't at the time, and I don't think we've located since. 02:22:38.720 --> 02:22:42.640 I haven't heard of anyone saying, here's an example of someone cursing 02:22:42.640 --> 02:22:45.520 someone in the name of God for rejecting the gospel. 02:22:45.520 --> 02:22:48.880 I'm gonna read two long passages because the entire text is really 02:22:48.880 --> 02:22:51.360 crucial for this understanding. 02:22:51.360 --> 02:22:53.760 The first is Acts thirteen. 02:22:53.760 --> 02:22:56.960 The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word 02:22:56.960 --> 02:22:59.520 of the Lord, but when the Jews saw the crowds, they were 02:22:59.520 --> 02:23:03.280 filled with jealousy, and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, 02:23:03.280 --> 02:23:04.320 reviling him. 02:23:04.320 --> 02:23:08.000 And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, It is necessary that 02:23:08.000 --> 02:23:11.040 the word of God be spoken first to you, since you thrust 02:23:11.040 --> 02:23:14.960 it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we are 02:23:14.960 --> 02:23:18.800 returning to the nations, for so the Lord has commanded us saying, 02:23:18.800 --> 02:23:21.040 I have made you a light for the nations that you may 02:23:21.040 --> 02:23:23.360 bring salvation to the ends of the earth. 02:23:23.360 --> 02:23:26.400 And when the nations heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the 02:23:26.400 --> 02:23:29.040 word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal 02:23:29.040 --> 02:23:32.160 life believed, and the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the 02:23:32.160 --> 02:23:33.040 whole region. 02:23:33.040 --> 02:23:36.160 But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing, and the 02:23:36.160 --> 02:23:40.080 leading men of the city stirring up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, 02:23:40.080 --> 02:23:42.800 and drove them out of their district. 02:23:42.800 --> 02:23:45.680 But they shook off the dust from their feet against them and 02:23:45.680 --> 02:23:49.200 went on to Iconium, and the disciples were filled with joy in 02:23:49.200 --> 02:23:50.720 the Holy Spirit. 02:23:51.200 --> 02:23:53.600 And again five chapters later. 02:23:53.600 --> 02:23:56.800 After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth, and he found 02:23:56.800 --> 02:24:00.400 a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy 02:24:00.480 --> 02:24:03.840 with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius has commanded all the Jews to 02:24:03.840 --> 02:24:04.560 leave Rome. 02:24:04.800 --> 02:24:07.120 And he went to see them, and because he was of the 02:24:07.120 --> 02:24:09.520 same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent 02:24:09.520 --> 02:24:10.560 makers by trade. 02:24:10.560 --> 02:24:14.400 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade 02:24:14.400 --> 02:24:15.600 Jews and Greeks. 02:24:15.600 --> 02:24:20.400 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the 02:24:20.400 --> 02:24:24.240 word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus, and when 02:24:24.240 --> 02:24:27.360 they opposed and reviled him he shook out his garments and said 02:24:27.360 --> 02:24:31.120 to them, Your blood be upon your own heads, I am innocent. 02:24:31.120 --> 02:24:34.000 From now on I will go to the nations. 02:24:34.160 --> 02:24:37.280 Because we said in episode eight, the very beginning of Stone Choir, 02:24:37.280 --> 02:24:37.840 what do we have? 02:24:37.840 --> 02:24:40.640 We have a command from Christ To curse a people in a 02:24:40.640 --> 02:24:43.920 place who reject the gospel, and we see Paul and Barnabas doing 02:24:43.920 --> 02:24:44.960 precisely that. 02:24:44.960 --> 02:24:48.800 He went to the Jews, they reviled him, they rejected the gospel. 02:24:48.800 --> 02:24:50.640 He said, I'm out of here. 02:24:50.640 --> 02:24:53.520 Cursed be you, may your blood be upon your own heads. 02:24:53.520 --> 02:24:54.800 I am innocent of it. 02:24:54.800 --> 02:24:56.240 I'm going to the Gentiles. 02:24:56.240 --> 02:24:57.440 I'm going to the nations. 02:24:57.440 --> 02:24:58.240 And where'd he go? 02:24:58.240 --> 02:25:00.320 He went to the Europeans. 02:25:00.320 --> 02:25:05.280 That is what God commanded when we are confronted with any unbeliever 02:25:05.280 --> 02:25:08.080 who blasphemes and rejects Christ. 02:25:08.080 --> 02:25:10.560 No Now, tell me this. 02:25:10.560 --> 02:25:12.960 Did we see Origen obey Christ? 02:25:12.960 --> 02:25:15.680 Did we see Jerome obey Christ? 02:25:15.680 --> 02:25:20.400 When they were confronted with blasphemers, who hate God Almighty, who reject 02:25:20.400 --> 02:25:24.720 his word, who refuse to hear the gospel, did they curse him 02:25:24.960 --> 02:25:26.480 as Christ commanded? 02:25:26.480 --> 02:25:29.040 Or did they say, No, I need to learn even more Hebrew? 02:25:29.040 --> 02:25:32.320 I gotta get really into this, and then I convince them. 02:25:32.320 --> 02:25:35.360 Paul was the one going around doing all the convincing from scripture, 02:25:35.360 --> 02:25:37.440 and he was also the one cursing. 02:25:37.440 --> 02:25:40.320 He shook the dust off his feet as a testimony against them 02:25:40.560 --> 02:25:42.400 because they rejected him. 02:25:42.400 --> 02:25:45.840 When you reason from scripture, when you reason from the Septuagint, and 02:25:45.840 --> 02:25:50.240 someone rejects it, Christ commands that you curse them and you leave. 02:25:50.240 --> 02:25:53.200 The Jews have been cursed since the day that the temple was 02:25:53.200 --> 02:25:56.880 destroyed. There is to be no more mission work to them. 02:25:56.880 --> 02:26:00.080 I don't see how we reach any other conclusion and yet what 02:26:00.080 --> 02:26:01.600 do we see instead? 02:26:01.600 --> 02:26:05.840 Since Origin, since Jerome, and up until this day, there are guys 02:26:05.840 --> 02:26:09.840 on X who revile Cory and me because they love the Jews 02:26:09.840 --> 02:26:12.880 so much that they go to Israel and try to preach to 02:26:12.880 --> 02:26:16.960 them in Hebrew and show them in their own Bible where Jesus 02:26:16.960 --> 02:26:17.680 is found. 02:26:17.680 --> 02:26:20.000 And you know what you see on the faces of those Jews 02:26:20.000 --> 02:26:20.880 when they do it? 02:26:20.880 --> 02:26:21.920 They're smiling. 02:26:21.920 --> 02:26:22.880 They love it. 02:26:22.880 --> 02:26:24.880 Because one, they love arguing. 02:26:24.880 --> 02:26:28.640 And two, they've trapped yet another fool. 02:26:28.640 --> 02:26:33.040 For centuries men have refused to obey Christ and curse those who 02:26:33.040 --> 02:26:34.880 reject the gospel. 02:26:34.880 --> 02:26:37.600 Jesus doesn't say to curse individually, he says curse the whole town 02:26:37.920 --> 02:26:39.120 and leave. 02:26:39.120 --> 02:26:42.640 There's no command to go back in the next generation. 02:26:42.640 --> 02:26:44.560 Those people are to be cursed forever. 02:26:44.560 --> 02:26:47.760 Now, if they come crawling back, absolutely they're to be received. 02:26:47.760 --> 02:26:51.280 And there are a few precious examples in church history of men 02:26:51.280 --> 02:26:51.760 doing that. 02:26:52.000 --> 02:26:56.480 We have Nicholas Donan in the thirteenth century and Johannes Pfeffricorn in 02:26:56.480 --> 02:26:57.520 the sixteenth century. 02:26:57.520 --> 02:26:59.520 We'll be talking about them next week. 02:26:59.520 --> 02:27:05.520 These were actual Jews by blood in Europe in the second millennium, 02:27:05.520 --> 02:27:11.440 who were raised as Christ killing, murdering Jews, who repented and believed 02:27:11.440 --> 02:27:15.120 the gospel, and they ceased to be Jews entirely, and they immediately 02:27:15.120 --> 02:27:18.160 went to the Christian rulers and said, Do Do you know what 02:27:18.160 --> 02:27:19.680 these guys are saying? 02:27:19.680 --> 02:27:23.360 One of the accusations of Donan in the thirteenth century was the 02:27:23.440 --> 02:27:28.160 specifically that prayer against the rulers and against the Christian believers. 02:27:28.160 --> 02:27:32.320 And Donan testified that every man, woman, and child prayed that repeatedly. 02:27:32.320 --> 02:27:35.040 And in the cases where the Jews in Europe were praying it 02:27:35.040 --> 02:27:38.320 and they didn't know Hebrew, which was common, they would pray it 02:27:38.320 --> 02:27:40.480 under their breath in the vernacular. 02:27:40.480 --> 02:27:42.720 But they prayed it three or five times a day as they 02:27:42.720 --> 02:27:47.680 were commanded, cursing the Nazarenes, cursing the Christians, wishing for their immediate 02:27:47.680 --> 02:27:52.400 death. These are not people to whom we are given a command 02:27:52.400 --> 02:27:54.080 to take the gospel. 02:27:54.080 --> 02:27:57.520 We are commanded by God to curse them and to turn away 02:27:57.520 --> 02:27:58.160 from them. 02:27:58.160 --> 02:28:01.840 And every single time that someone has disobeyed Christ and said, Oh, 02:28:01.840 --> 02:28:05.120 I'm gonna learn Hebrew so I can talk to them, A, he's 02:28:05.120 --> 02:28:09.600 rejecting history because the rabbis who murdered Christ in the first century 02:28:09.760 --> 02:28:11.360 still accepted the Greek. 02:28:11.360 --> 02:28:14.640 It was not until after the temple was destroyed that they realized 02:28:14.640 --> 02:28:18.240 how deadly the Septuagint was to Judaism. 02:28:18.240 --> 02:28:20.400 That's when the turn occurred. 02:28:20.400 --> 02:28:23.600 When we go to Jews and say, I'm going to accept your 02:28:23.600 --> 02:28:27.280 frame, I'm going to learn Hebrew, I'm going to debate you from 02:28:27.280 --> 02:28:32.400 the original language, we're calling Christ a liar and we're disobeying him. 02:28:32.400 --> 02:28:34.000 That's the bottom line here. 02:28:34.000 --> 02:28:38.240 It's not as simple as textual sources for translations, which is why 02:28:38.240 --> 02:28:42.080 I've said on X previously, this series is the most important thing 02:28:42.080 --> 02:28:44.240 Stonequir will ever do. 02:28:44.240 --> 02:28:46.560 Because this is such a fundamental 02:28:47.600 --> 02:28:51.840 shift in the approach that Christians should have taken all along to 02:28:51.840 --> 02:28:55.040 God's word and to how we receive it, that when you start 02:28:55.040 --> 02:28:59.520 looking at the mistakes downstream from the small mistake that Origin made 02:28:59.680 --> 02:29:02.080 and the bigger mistake that Jerome made. 02:29:02.080 --> 02:29:03.840 That was a very intelligent argument. 02:29:03.840 --> 02:29:06.240 Why would I drink from a muddied stream when I can go 02:29:06.240 --> 02:29:07.600 to the pure spring? 02:29:07.600 --> 02:29:08.720 That's a great argument. 02:29:08.720 --> 02:29:10.480 I love the argument in principle. 02:29:10.480 --> 02:29:13.440 But the pure spring is the Septuagint. 02:29:13.440 --> 02:29:16.320 It is the inspired word of God that was received and confessed 02:29:16.320 --> 02:29:18.320 by Christ and the apostles. 02:29:18.320 --> 02:29:21.440 That is the pure spring that the church must drink from, and 02:29:21.440 --> 02:29:26.400 our failures to do so are downstream themselves or upstream from every 02:29:26.400 --> 02:29:27.440 problem that we have now. 02:29:27.440 --> 02:29:31.920 Stonequarred wouldn't exist if the Masoretic text didn't exist. 02:29:31.920 --> 02:29:35.360 If we had not, as a church, long before any of us 02:29:35.360 --> 02:29:39.280 showed up, if we had not rejected the Greek scripture as it 02:29:39.280 --> 02:29:41.600 was received, we wouldn't have these problems. 02:29:41.600 --> 02:29:42.240 You know why? 02:29:42.560 --> 02:29:45.520 Because at no point would we have ever let a single Jew 02:29:45.520 --> 02:29:48.400 become a part of the conversation about our God. 02:29:48.400 --> 02:29:53.120 Look at how many different episodes we've done that involve something some 02:29:53.120 --> 02:29:56.080 harm that they have done in Christian lands. 02:29:56.080 --> 02:29:59.120 None of that harm could possibly have been done if we had 02:29:59.120 --> 02:30:00.960 not listened to them. 02:30:00.960 --> 02:30:02.160 It's just that simple. 02:30:02.160 --> 02:30:03.920 That's not even a question of hatred. 02:30:03.920 --> 02:30:05.360 It's not a question of cruelty. 02:30:05.360 --> 02:30:07.200 It's just I'm not listening. 02:30:07.200 --> 02:30:10.000 It's exactly the same thing that many people say about Stonequare. 02:30:10.000 --> 02:30:11.760 Don't listen to the go those guys at all. 02:30:11.760 --> 02:30:12.960 They're dangerous. 02:30:12.960 --> 02:30:15.520 Yes, we are dangerous to those who hate God. 02:30:15.520 --> 02:30:19.360 We are dangerous to those who do not believe what Christ says. 02:30:19.360 --> 02:30:22.480 And even the small things like shaking the dust off your feet, 02:30:22.480 --> 02:30:25.040 the vanished from Christian practice. 02:30:25.040 --> 02:30:27.280 At the time I said seems like a small thing, I don't 02:30:27.200 --> 02:30:28.240 know what to do with it. 02:30:28.240 --> 02:30:31.360 Ninety-two episodes later, I have a pretty good idea where it should 02:30:31.360 --> 02:30:33.600 have been done, at least once. 02:30:33.600 --> 02:30:37.360 If we as Christians cannot shake the dust off our feet against 02:30:37.360 --> 02:30:40.720 the Jews who murdered Christ and dance in his blood to this 02:30:40.720 --> 02:30:43.040 day, then we should just delete that from our Bibles. 02:30:43.040 --> 02:30:45.760 We should rip it out and say that Jesus was wrong. 02:30:45.760 --> 02:30:48.640 Because if it doesn't apply to them, it doesn't apply to anyone. 02:30:48.640 --> 02:30:52.320 And every problem that we have since then can be traced to 02:30:52.320 --> 02:30:53.360 this mistake. 02:30:53.360 --> 02:30:55.760 That's why the Septuagint matters so much. 02:30:55.760 --> 02:30:56.880 And that's crucial. 02:30:56.880 --> 02:31:00.240 It's not ultimately about the differences as textual sources. 02:31:00.480 --> 02:31:03.440 It's not ultimately about whether any doctrines will change. 02:31:03.440 --> 02:31:05.680 I don't think for the most part they will. 02:31:05.680 --> 02:31:09.120 I you know, there's always clarification when someone makes a better argument. 02:31:09.120 --> 02:31:12.160 It's possible things will be clarified, but this is not going to 02:31:12.160 --> 02:31:15.120 revamp Christianity because the text change. 02:31:15.120 --> 02:31:18.400 What is changing here if people believe what we are saying is 02:31:18.400 --> 02:31:20.880 we're gonna stop inviting Jews inside the room. 02:31:20.880 --> 02:31:24.640 We're gonna stop inviting Jews to the table who curse us and 02:31:24.640 --> 02:31:28.800 wish us dead and curse God every day of their lives and 02:31:28.800 --> 02:31:30.480 by every action that they take. 02:31:30.480 --> 02:31:32.960 Those people should not have been at the table in the first 02:31:32.960 --> 02:31:37.120 place. And Origin opened the door and Jerome set the table, and 02:31:37.120 --> 02:31:39.920 the Reformation served the feast to the Jews. 02:31:39.920 --> 02:31:42.240 By that point, all hope was lost. 02:31:42.240 --> 02:31:44.320 We're gonna finish with Masoric text. 02:31:44.320 --> 02:31:47.920 When we talk next week about went on in Europe, it's a 02:31:47.920 --> 02:31:53.040 lot of really bad stuff downstream from Jerome's brilliant specious demonic argument 02:31:53.040 --> 02:31:54.320 about springs. 02:31:54.320 --> 02:31:55.520 It's very appealing. 02:31:55.520 --> 02:31:58.320 If he had applied it directly to the Septuagint, none of this 02:31:58.400 --> 02:32:00.960 would have happened. 02:32:00.960 --> 02:32:01.280 We could 02:32:01.280 --> 02:32:07.280 actually take Jerome's illustration of muddy waters or a pure stream and 02:32:07.280 --> 02:32:10.000 really turn it around against him. 02:32:10.000 --> 02:32:11.440 Because there are 02:32:12.320 --> 02:32:17.840 two different streams we're dealing with, essentially when dealing with what is 02:32:17.840 --> 02:32:20.800 the Old Testament, what is Scripture? 02:32:20.800 --> 02:32:25.360 On the one hand we have the Septuagint, which is cited by 02:32:25.360 --> 02:32:30.000 Christ, referenced by the apostles, considered the word of God by the 02:32:30.000 --> 02:32:36.400 early church, accepted universally, until men started digging into the Hebrew so 02:32:36.400 --> 02:32:40.560 called. And then on the other hand, we have what becomes the 02:32:40.560 --> 02:32:48.080 Masoretic text, which which is the muddy water produced by the Jews. 02:32:48.080 --> 02:32:52.000 So quite simply the question is which one should we as Christians 02:32:52.240 --> 02:32:56.960 accept? It's fundamentally not a difficult question. 02:32:57.280 --> 02:33:01.600 Because we've laid out the history, and the history is very straightforward. 02:33:01.600 --> 02:33:06.640 Do you believe Christ, the apostles, and your forefathers in the faith? 02:33:06.640 --> 02:33:08.720 Or do you believe the Jews who rejected Christ 02:33:09.680 --> 02:33:13.600 and pray to Satan multiple times every day for your destruction? 02:33:14.960 --> 02:33:19.040 It's almost ridiculous that it is necessary to present that as even 02:33:19.040 --> 02:33:22.240 being Even being a question, because it isn't really a question. 02:33:22.240 --> 02:33:26.640 It's like asking, would you like some water or some poison? 02:33:26.640 --> 02:33:30.160 Very straightforward which you should take. 02:33:30.160 --> 02:33:34.880 But to end with the Masoretic text, because that is the basis 02:33:34.880 --> 02:33:37.520 of the Old Testament in most of our Bibles now. 02:33:37.520 --> 02:33:43.520 It is necessary to look at how that text came to be. 02:33:43.520 --> 02:33:45.440 Who wrote that text? 02:33:45.440 --> 02:33:49.520 Where did it enter the church? 02:33:49.520 --> 02:33:54.800 Before getting to the Masoretes and the production of the Masoretic text 02:33:54.800 --> 02:34:00.160 itself, it's worthwhile to mention something that happened Or was completed at 02:34:00.160 --> 02:34:07.040 least, just before they began their project of the Masoretic text. 02:34:07.040 --> 02:34:09.920 And that is the Babylonian Talmud. 02:34:09.920 --> 02:34:14.800 Because the Talmud was completed in about the year five hundred. 02:34:14.800 --> 02:34:20.800 And incidentally, the earliest time for the undertaking of what would become 02:34:20.800 --> 02:34:24.960 the Masoretic text by the Masoretes is about five hundred. 02:34:25.920 --> 02:34:32.320 So they ended one project and began immediately the next one. 02:34:32.320 --> 02:34:37.120 Now taking place in different parts of the world, although in commerce 02:34:37.120 --> 02:34:40.400 with each other at the time. 02:34:40.400 --> 02:34:45.280 So you have the completion of the Talmud, which is everything wicked, 02:34:45.280 --> 02:34:49.920 about the Jewish religion, which is not the Christian religion, Judaism is 02:34:49.920 --> 02:34:53.920 not Christianity As I have mentioned before, one of the most famous 02:34:53.920 --> 02:34:59.120 sayings among the Jews about the Talmud is what Torah prohibits, Talmud 02:34:59.120 --> 02:35:04.080 permits. It is literally just an inversion of everything God has said 02:35:04.080 --> 02:35:05.360 is good. 02:35:06.000 --> 02:35:10.240 And permission to do everything God has said is wicked. 02:35:10.320 --> 02:35:15.360 But then the Jews set about producing the Masoretic text. 02:35:15.440 --> 02:35:20.880 We d don't have whatever documents they supposedly used as the basis 02:35:20.880 --> 02:35:23.280 for the Masoretic text. 02:35:23.280 --> 02:35:27.360 We know what documents were used as the basis for the Septuagint, 02:35:27.360 --> 02:35:32.960 because we have for one, the letter of Aristius, which does have 02:35:32.960 --> 02:35:37.200 corroborating facts from that time that we know from other sources. 02:35:37.200 --> 02:35:41.200 For instance, it's the right high priest, it's Onias III. 02:35:41.200 --> 02:35:43.680 We know his brother, Jason. 02:35:43.680 --> 02:35:47.040 We know that it was written at a certain point in time 02:35:47.280 --> 02:35:51.440 because it mentions that the high priest was still wearing a breastplate. 02:35:51.440 --> 02:35:54.800 Something that stopped happening around the year 200 BC. 02:35:54.800 --> 02:35:58.400 So that matches the timeline that we have for the Septuagint. 02:35:58.400 --> 02:36:02.160 And so we know that the documents used to produce the Septuagint 02:36:02.320 --> 02:36:08.320 came from the documents that were held in the temple in Jerusalem. 02:36:08.320 --> 02:36:11.600 We don't know the source of the source of the Masoretic text. 02:36:11.600 --> 02:36:12.880 We have speculation. 02:36:12.880 --> 02:36:14.960 There's plenty of speculation. 02:36:14.960 --> 02:36:18.080 We don't have proof. 02:36:18.080 --> 02:36:22.560 But the Masoretic text is produced by these Jews who bear in 02:36:22.560 --> 02:36:26.960 mind again, this is 500 and not 500 BC. 02:36:26.960 --> 02:36:28.640 This is AD 500. 02:36:28.640 --> 02:36:33.920 Between about 500 and 1000, you have the production of this text 02:36:33.920 --> 02:36:35.840 that becomes the basis. 02:36:35.840 --> 02:36:38.880 And so you have some fragments of things that exist before that, 02:36:38.880 --> 02:36:43.200 obviously, because Jerome was doing his translating work before this. 02:36:43.200 --> 02:36:45.760 He did not have access to this. 02:36:45.760 --> 02:36:47.920 Again, we don't know what sources he used. 02:36:47.920 --> 02:36:51.680 He used whatever the rabbis gave him, and then he did not 02:36:51.680 --> 02:36:55.120 preserve them for us, so we cannot examine them. 02:36:55.120 --> 02:36:59.440 But the Masoretes retreat into the desert and produce their version of 02:36:59.440 --> 02:37:03.120 Scripture, and then pass it into the church. 02:37:03.120 --> 02:37:08.320 The oldest example we have existing of the Masoretic text is from 02:37:08.320 --> 02:37:10.880 the year 1008 or 1009. 02:37:10.880 --> 02:37:13.120 It is the Leningrad Codex. 02:37:13.440 --> 02:37:18.080 That is the oldest copy of the Masoretic text. 02:37:18.080 --> 02:37:20.800 A mere one thousand years ago, a little bit more than that 02:37:20.960 --> 02:37:26.560 today. Compare that to the oldest copies we have of the Septuagint, 02:37:26.560 --> 02:37:31.520 which are from the second and the third and the fourth century. 02:37:31.520 --> 02:37:36.240 So when people try to argue that they're returning to the Hebrew, 02:37:36.240 --> 02:37:41.280 they're going back to the older documents, the originals No they're not. 02:37:41.840 --> 02:37:48.880 The Masoretic text is significantly younger, is significantly newer than the Septuagint. 02:37:48.880 --> 02:37:53.600 The Septuagint is the oldest attested copy of the Old Testament that 02:37:53.600 --> 02:37:54.320 we have. 02:37:54.320 --> 02:37:57.920 And as we've already explained in the episode, it has the divine 02:37:58.080 --> 02:37:59.040 stamp on it. 02:37:59.040 --> 02:38:00.560 It is the Word of God. 02:38:00.560 --> 02:38:04.320 We do not have that with the Masoretic text. 02:38:04.320 --> 02:38:07.920 And so again, just to present the core question here with regard 02:38:07.920 --> 02:38:11.760 to which one you will choose, are you going to trust the 02:38:11.760 --> 02:38:17.680 Septuagint, which has the stamp of approval of Christ, the Apostles, and 02:38:17.680 --> 02:38:21.840 the early Church, Or are you going to pick the Masoretic text, 02:38:21.840 --> 02:38:27.040 which was produced under dubious circumstances by Jews who had rejected Christ 02:38:27.280 --> 02:38:33.040 and then brought into the church with no attestation to its provenance? 02:38:33.040 --> 02:38:36.080 It is not a hard question. 02:38:36.080 --> 02:38:40.960 This is something that Christians should quite frankly have never got wrong. 02:38:40.960 --> 02:38:44.480 This is something our forefathers in the faith should have figured out 02:38:44.480 --> 02:38:45.600 at the time. 02:38:45.600 --> 02:38:47.680 Jerome should have known better. 02:38:47.680 --> 02:38:49.600 Origen should have known better. 02:38:49.600 --> 02:38:53.360 Augustine perhaps should have tried harder to dissuade Jerome from what he 02:38:53.360 --> 02:38:54.400 was undertaking. 02:38:54.400 --> 02:38:56.480 The Pope should not have approved it. 02:38:56.480 --> 02:39:00.160 Any number of men could have done something other than what they 02:39:00.160 --> 02:39:04.960 did. They could have acted otherwise and solved the problem before it 02:39:04.960 --> 02:39:07.280 became a problem for us today. 02:39:07.280 --> 02:39:10.800 It is unfortunate that it was allowed to not only enter into 02:39:11.360 --> 02:39:14.800 the churches, but to fester for so long. 02:39:14.800 --> 02:39:17.840 As we've said, this is not exactly an issue that we want 02:39:17.840 --> 02:39:19.040 to address. 02:39:19.040 --> 02:39:21.760 This is an issue that must be addressed. 02:39:21.760 --> 02:39:24.160 It is going to cause strife. 02:39:24.160 --> 02:39:26.880 There is no way around that. 02:39:26.880 --> 02:39:30.240 But it is unavoidable strife, and it is strife that needs to 02:39:30.240 --> 02:39:31.600 be caused. 02:39:31.600 --> 02:39:33.280 Because this is an issue of truth. 02:39:33.280 --> 02:39:36.240 It is an issue of what is God's word and what is 02:39:36.320 --> 02:39:36.400 God 02:39:37.280 --> 02:39:40.720 commanded us to do, and how can we be faithful to that 02:39:40.720 --> 02:39:43.520 which He has commanded us to do? 02:39:43.520 --> 02:39:47.120 As Woe said, We are commanded to knock the dust off our 02:39:47.120 --> 02:39:51.040 sandals when we leave a town full of those who have rejected 02:39:51.040 --> 02:39:57.600 the gospel of Christ Well That's Jerusalem Jerome went and lived there, 02:39:57.600 --> 02:40:02.400 in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, for fourteen years, in order to produce his 02:40:02.960 --> 02:40:09.440 translation of these sources provided to him by rabbis, under the tutelage 02:40:09.440 --> 02:40:14.160 of rabbis, in cooperation with rabbis. 02:40:14.160 --> 02:40:17.920 That is most certainly not knocking the dust off your sandals when 02:40:17.920 --> 02:40:22.000 you leave the town of those who have rejected Christ. 02:40:22.000 --> 02:40:25.760 As Christians we need to take seriously what Christ has told us 02:40:25.760 --> 02:40:27.280 to do. 02:40:27.520 --> 02:40:30.880 We don't get to ignore any part of Scripture, any of the 02:40:30.880 --> 02:40:31.600 commands of Christ. 02:40:31.600 --> 02:40:34.160 And incidentally, now we're dealing with the New Testament. 02:40:34.160 --> 02:40:36.240 There's no squabbling over that. 02:40:36.240 --> 02:40:38.640 Incidentally, also Greek. 02:40:38.640 --> 02:40:40.960 But we have the Greek in the New Testament. 02:40:41.120 --> 02:40:44.000 We know what Christ has said, His commands are clear. 02:40:44.000 --> 02:40:46.800 We simply have not followed them. 02:40:46.800 --> 02:40:50.160 That is something our forefathers in the faith should have done they 02:40:50.160 --> 02:40:51.280 didn't do. 02:40:51.280 --> 02:40:54.880 The best thing that we can do now is confess the sins 02:40:54.880 --> 02:40:58.640 of our fathers, which is a Christian confession, both we and our 02:40:58.640 --> 02:41:03.040 fathers have sinned, and then do better, correct the errors that they 02:41:03.040 --> 02:41:08.320 made. One of those errors is, as Woe said, giving Jews any 02:41:08.320 --> 02:41:10.240 place at the table. 02:41:10.240 --> 02:41:15.600 And it's not just Jews, it's particularly Jews because they explicitly rejected 02:41:15.600 --> 02:41:19.760 Christ, and they had the oracles of God as scripture said and 02:41:19.760 --> 02:41:23.760 so they had a higher duty and they have a greater guilt. 02:41:23.760 --> 02:41:26.960 But I wouldn't give a Hindu a space at the table. 02:41:26.960 --> 02:41:30.160 I wouldn't give a Buddhist a space at the table. 02:41:30.160 --> 02:41:34.320 No one would ever argue that you should have a pagan or 02:41:34.320 --> 02:41:37.840 a Buddhist or a Hindu or someone who subscribes to Shinto, whatever 02:41:37.840 --> 02:41:38.880 it happens to be. 02:41:38.880 --> 02:41:42.160 No one would ever argue that you should have someone at the 02:41:42.160 --> 02:41:46.640 table from another religion and yet so many Christians argue that you 02:41:46.640 --> 02:41:50.160 should have Jews at the table, when they are in fact worse 02:41:50.160 --> 02:41:53.360 off than any other pagan. 02:41:53.360 --> 02:41:56.960 Because they not only do not worship the one true God, having 02:41:56.960 --> 02:42:02.880 rejected his Son, they explicitly reject him and curse those who do 02:42:02.880 --> 02:42:04.080 follow him. 02:42:04.080 --> 02:42:07.760 They are the most miserable of all men on this planet. 02:42:07.760 --> 02:42:11.200 They are in the worst position to see anything of the truth 02:42:11.200 --> 02:42:12.240 in Scripture. 02:42:12.240 --> 02:42:15.040 They should never be at the table. 02:42:15.040 --> 02:42:20.880 And yet, for centuries, Christian pastors and Christian teachers have gone to 02:42:20.880 --> 02:42:23.760 them and asked them questions about Scripture. 02:42:23.760 --> 02:42:27.520 I am almost tempted to say it's tantamount to apostasy because it 02:42:27.520 --> 02:42:29.920 comes very close. 02:42:29.920 --> 02:42:33.760 Because asking those about whom Scripture says they do not have the 02:42:33.760 --> 02:42:38.240 Spirit, about whom Scripture says they are blind and deaf and dumb 02:42:38.880 --> 02:42:43.200 What the Word of God says, when you are a Christian and 02:42:43.200 --> 02:42:46.080 you have the Holy Spirit, and Scripture has promised that you will 02:42:46.080 --> 02:42:49.840 be led into the truth by the Spirit, you are disbelieving the 02:42:49.840 --> 02:42:53.760 Word of God by not relying on what on what you have 02:42:53.760 --> 02:42:56.960 as a Christian, what you have been given as your patrimony as 02:42:56.960 --> 02:42:59.760 a Christian, which is incidentally given to you in Greek in the 02:42:59.760 --> 02:43:04.640 Septuagint, and instead going to the wicked Jews who have no promises, 02:43:04.640 --> 02:43:09.280 who have absolutely no insight into Scripture. 02:43:09.280 --> 02:43:14.000 If they had any insight into Scripture, they would be Christians. 02:43:14.000 --> 02:43:15.680 We should never go to them. 02:43:15.680 --> 02:43:18.080 Our forefathers should never have gone to them. 02:43:18.080 --> 02:43:22.240 It falls to us to repent of that wickedness, and to correct 02:43:22.240 --> 02:43:24.560 their errors. 02:43:24.560 --> 02:43:28.080 And the first step in that is getting rid of the Masoretic 02:43:28.080 --> 02:43:33.040 text. And going back to the Scripture of Christ and the Apostles, 02:43:33.040 --> 02:43:36.640 going back to the Scripture of the Early Church, going back to 02:43:36.640 --> 02:43:40.800 the Scripture upon which the Christian Church is founded because it is 02:43:40.800 --> 02:43:42.080 the Word of God. 02:43:42.080 --> 02:43:46.000 And that is the Septuagint. 02:43:46.000 --> 02:43:50.160 One of the obvious objections to what Corey just said that will 02:43:50.160 --> 02:43:54.160 spring to some minds is well what about the Dead Sea Scrolls? 02:43:54.160 --> 02:43:56.960 To which the response is contained in his previous comment 02:43:57.920 --> 02:43:59.600 was Jesus wrong? 02:43:59.600 --> 02:44:02.320 I'll tell you what I think about the Dead Sea Scrolls. 02:44:02.320 --> 02:44:07.200 A, they're completely irrelevant to every Christian, because we already have Scripture, 02:44:07.200 --> 02:44:09.120 as Scripture itself attests. 02:44:09.680 --> 02:44:15.120 B, there is non trivial evidence that at least some, if not 02:44:15.120 --> 02:44:18.320 a substantial portion, are in fact forgeries. 02:44:18.320 --> 02:44:20.560 Doesn't matter, because CA 02:44:21.440 --> 02:44:28.320 but the timing, nineteen forty seven, substantiating, you know, territorial claims in 02:44:28.320 --> 02:44:31.920 that part of the world, pretty convenient that it was discovered right 02:44:31.920 --> 02:44:34.480 then. People were also listening, so I don't know. 02:44:34.480 --> 02:44:36.320 Maybe true, maybe false. 02:44:36.320 --> 02:44:39.440 But see, my sole evaluation for what is dug out of the 02:44:39.440 --> 02:44:44.640 Dead Sea scrolls or anywhere else, that some amazing new archaeological find 02:44:44.640 --> 02:44:48.320 of some ancient forelaga occurred occurs. 02:44:48.320 --> 02:44:52.400 Either it says the same thing that the scripture of Jesus and 02:44:52.400 --> 02:44:56.880 the Apostle says, in which case I will celebrate God's great mercy 02:44:56.880 --> 02:45:01.200 and his love in preserving his word so faithfully through the generations, 02:45:01.200 --> 02:45:04.880 or it's gonna say something different and I'll say curse it and 02:45:04.880 --> 02:45:06.080 burn it. 02:45:06.080 --> 02:45:07.360 That's it. 02:45:07.360 --> 02:45:11.520 If we trust Jesus and the apostles and we trust the scripture 02:45:11.520 --> 02:45:15.520 that they used, then all these other questions fly out the window, 02:45:15.520 --> 02:45:17.840 which is Which is why I said in episode ninety nine, I 02:45:17.840 --> 02:45:21.040 said at the beginning of this one, some of your objections become 02:45:21.040 --> 02:45:25.040 irrelevant if you accept a portion of our argument. 02:45:25.040 --> 02:45:28.720 You shouldn't care about the Dead Sea scrolls, because either they say 02:45:28.720 --> 02:45:31.760 the same thing that the scripture that God gave us says, or 02:45:31.760 --> 02:45:33.120 they're demonic. 02:45:33.120 --> 02:45:36.960 Or they're mistakes, or they're forgeries, or they're bad copies, or whatever, 02:45:36.960 --> 02:45:38.560 but they're irrelevant. 02:45:38.560 --> 02:45:41.920 You don't have to have a strongly held opinion beyond I don't 02:45:41.920 --> 02:45:44.800 care. That's a pretty good opinion for most people to have about 02:45:44.800 --> 02:45:45.680 most things. 02:45:45.680 --> 02:45:49.520 Because this stuff is time consuming, it's complicated, it's easy to make 02:45:49.520 --> 02:45:52.160 mistakes, it's easy to get twisted around backwards. 02:45:52.160 --> 02:45:54.320 But some of this stuff is so important that we have to 02:45:54.320 --> 02:45:55.520 get it right. 02:45:55.520 --> 02:45:59.840 Dead Sea Scrolls and any other example of older writing, and again, 02:45:59.840 --> 02:46:06.240 the crucial thing about the Leningrad Codex from 1008 AD, that's one 02:46:06.240 --> 02:46:07.680 thousand seventeen years ago. 02:46:07.680 --> 02:46:10.800 This is brand new by church history standards. 02:46:10.800 --> 02:46:13.840 It's over six centuries newer than the copies that we have of 02:46:13.840 --> 02:46:16.560 the Greek Bible which are authentic. 02:46:16.560 --> 02:46:20.160 Everything prior to that was a thousand years of Christ killers, and 02:46:20.000 --> 02:46:23.520 B, it was based entirely on an oral tradition. 02:46:23.520 --> 02:46:27.040 The only thing that changed when the Masoretes put all those decorations 02:46:27.040 --> 02:46:31.040 on it so that you could actually read this newly constituted written 02:46:31.440 --> 02:46:33.760 Hebrew language that never existed before. 02:46:33.760 --> 02:46:36.480 Is that now they could sell a book to someone and say, 02:46:36.480 --> 02:46:39.600 here's a primer, which we're going to talk about next week, and 02:46:39.600 --> 02:46:40.880 here's your Bible. 02:46:40.880 --> 02:46:42.560 And so you can go learn Hebrew on your own. 02:46:42.560 --> 02:46:43.760 You don't need a rabbi anymore. 02:46:43.760 --> 02:46:47.280 No rabbi in the loop Well, of course, everyone still goes and 02:46:47.280 --> 02:46:50.640 consults rabbis, or they consult men who are in the church who 02:46:50.640 --> 02:46:51.840 have consulted rabbis. 02:46:51.840 --> 02:46:56.720 You can't get away from them because ultimately everything that touches Hebrew 02:46:56.720 --> 02:47:00.480 in any form is based on the oral tradition passed down from 02:47:00.480 --> 02:47:02.080 those who'd murdered Christ. 02:47:02.080 --> 02:47:05.120 As Cory said, if that's not a reason not to reject them, 02:47:05.120 --> 02:47:06.720 I don't know what is. 02:47:06.720 --> 02:47:09.920 I honestly don't know any Christian could know that to be a 02:47:09.920 --> 02:47:13.040 fact Which it is undisputably. 02:47:13.040 --> 02:47:15.120 And say, well, I'm going to listen to him anyway. 02:47:15.120 --> 02:47:17.360 Maybe they have some good things to say about Jesus. 02:47:17.360 --> 02:47:21.120 I'm going to get closer to God by listening to what these 02:47:21.120 --> 02:47:22.240 people say. 02:47:22.240 --> 02:47:24.560 That's why I said it doesn't matter if it's exactly the same 02:47:25.040 --> 02:47:26.320 word for word or not. 02:47:26.320 --> 02:47:27.440 I don't care. 02:47:27.440 --> 02:47:30.640 These people murdered Christ and they hate him and they hate us. 02:47:30.640 --> 02:47:32.320 They don't get a seat at the table. 02:47:32.320 --> 02:47:36.080 They don't get to talk about our religion and our God. 02:47:36.080 --> 02:47:39.440 Every time we have gone to the Jews and said, Well, hey, 02:47:39.440 --> 02:47:43.280 we're going to argue in Hebrew so we can convert you, that 02:47:43.280 --> 02:47:45.520 has been an act of wickedness. 02:47:45.520 --> 02:47:48.080 The apostles stopped doing it. 02:47:48.080 --> 02:47:50.080 We shouldn't have continued. 02:47:50.080 --> 02:47:52.640 And it seems like such a Christian thing to do, to take 02:47:52.640 --> 02:47:54.000 it to all the nations. 02:47:54.000 --> 02:47:56.480 Do we believe God's command or not? 02:47:56.720 --> 02:48:00.480 He says when someone rejects the gospel, you curse them and you 02:48:00.480 --> 02:48:03.040 leave forever. 02:48:03.040 --> 02:48:06.560 The fact that we didn't do it has borne fruit. 02:48:06.880 --> 02:48:10.240 So, as I said, I hope you've been writing down any objections 02:48:10.240 --> 02:48:11.120 you have. 02:48:11.120 --> 02:48:15.200 Please, for the sake of my sanity, don't complain too much yet 02:48:15.200 --> 02:48:16.160 until we're done. 02:48:16.160 --> 02:48:18.560 We have at least three more episodes to do. 02:48:18.560 --> 02:48:21.280 This one looks like it's gonna be about three hours long. 02:48:21.280 --> 02:48:23.680 Hopefully other ones won't be that long. 02:48:23.680 --> 02:48:26.720 But let us finish making our case before you complain about all 02:48:26.720 --> 02:48:27.840 the things that we got wrong. 02:48:27.840 --> 02:48:30.000 I would make my life a lot easier. 02:48:30.000 --> 02:48:31.920 So if you want to make me miserable, do it. 02:48:31.920 --> 02:48:32.720 But whatever. 02:48:32.720 --> 02:48:34.400 I appreciate the people care. 02:48:34.400 --> 02:48:37.520 Uh thank you to everyone who shares Stone Choir anywhere. 02:48:37.520 --> 02:48:42.160 If you're listening to us for the first time on Spotify or 02:48:42.160 --> 02:48:45.680 wherever. The best place to find us is on our own website 02:48:45.840 --> 02:48:47.520 with the RSS link. 02:48:47.520 --> 02:48:50.480 You can find the listen to podcast thing at the top. 02:48:50.480 --> 02:48:54.640 If you paste that RSS feed directly into your podcast player, you'll 02:48:55.040 --> 02:48:56.240 never miss an episode. 02:48:56.240 --> 02:48:58.240 It's completely uncensorable. 02:48:58.240 --> 02:49:01.600 We've already had at least one episode censored on some of the 02:49:01.600 --> 02:49:05.040 other platforms, specifically for talking about some of these things. 02:49:05.040 --> 02:49:08.160 This one probably won't get deep platform, but they would love to 02:49:08.160 --> 02:49:09.440 see us go away entirely. 02:49:09.440 --> 02:49:10.560 It may happen at some point. 02:49:10.560 --> 02:49:13.200 So if you do enjoy us, I would suggest you use the 02:49:13.200 --> 02:49:15.920 RSS feed because it'll be immune to that. 02:49:16.080 --> 02:49:18.160 Thank you to everyone who shares our content. 02:49:18.160 --> 02:49:20.320 Thank you everybody who has donated in the past. 02:49:20.320 --> 02:49:21.600 It means a great deal. 02:49:21.600 --> 02:49:23.040 And thank you for sticking around. 02:49:23.040 --> 02:49:25.760 Thank you for putting up with these long episodes. 02:49:25.760 --> 02:49:28.720 The next episode, as I said, is gonna pick up right where 02:49:28.720 --> 02:49:29.600 this left off. 02:49:29.600 --> 02:49:32.720 We've ended with the Masoretic text in one thousand eight AD. 02:49:32.720 --> 02:49:34.640 That's pretty much what we're gonna pick up next week. 02:49:34.640 --> 02:49:38.240 So we've done is segregated this first episode is more or less 02:49:38.240 --> 02:49:41.600 the Mediterranean edition of the Septuagint story. 02:49:41.600 --> 02:49:44.560 Next week is going to be the European edition of the Septuagint 02:49:45.280 --> 02:49:49.280 story, and that's going to be precisely about all the places where 02:49:49.280 --> 02:49:53.840 all of our favorite Protestant and even Roman Catholic fathers in the 02:49:53.840 --> 02:49:56.240 faith didn't do what we said they should have done. 02:49:56.240 --> 02:49:58.400 And we're going to see what happened when they didn't. 02:49:58.400 --> 02:50:02.400 And then the subsequent two weeks will be looking at the actual 02:50:02.400 --> 02:50:06.480 text of the Old Testament, comparing some of the Masoretic to some 02:50:06.480 --> 02:50:07.840 of the Septuagint. 02:50:07.840 --> 02:50:11.200 And the last episode we're going to conclude really with where our 02:50:11.200 --> 02:50:16.160 argument is fundamentally laid, and that is the scripture of the New 02:50:16.320 --> 02:50:20.160 Testament of Jesus of the Apostles is the Septuagint. 02:50:20.160 --> 02:50:22.800 We're going to make that case last because it's the most important 02:50:22.800 --> 02:50:25.680 part rather than leaving you with our arguments, we're gonna leave you 02:50:25.680 --> 02:50:30.000 with proof from the New Testament that the Old Testament in Greek 02:50:30.160 --> 02:50:32.720 is breathed out by the Word of God.