Hour 2: How We Got the Bible

Hello friends. It's time for the second hour of Open Line with Doctor Michael Moody Radio's Bible Study Across America. Today is a special pre-recorded edition of Open Line, so don't call. Today we're focusing on the inspiration and authority of the Bible. How do we get the scriptures? I'm Michael Melnick, dean of the undergraduate school at Moody Bible Institute.

I do. Okay. So my first question which will get us into the next ones is can you define canon. That's kind of what we're going to talk about. Now. What is the canon.

We're not talking about weaponry here. Okay.

So this is actually spelled differently.

This is not Pirates of the Caribbean here. That's not what we're doing. We're talking about a word that means a measuring rod of some sort. The word canon comes to us as canon, and the suggestion is a stick, an instrument that was used to measure things. And now, by extension, by metaphor, that becomes a way of describing either the books that measured up to a certain standard or the books that become the measuring standard by which we measure other things.

And so, you know, people use the word canon. We're talking about the canon of scripture, the books that should be in the Bible.

Right?

The way people use it, they should understand it. Because I hear students all the time talking about the canon of Star Wars.

Or the canon of Western literature. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. And so we're talking about, you know, which are the key books that everyone should read in Western literature, or we're talking about the canon of the Star Wars movies. Right? Uh, and and so when we're talking about books of the Bible, we're saying these are those that are the word of God. This is the inspired scripture, these and we're talking about the Old Testament canon, and we talk about the New Testament canon, which books were included in the Bible. That's

It's an important distinction, because not all the books that were out there in the ancient world made it in. Right. And so it's important to know which ones are the authoritative ones.

And even as we were talking about last hour, there are other writings that the authors in the Bible will reference that are not in the Bible.

Right? Yeah, they will actually use other sources that are not biblical. They're they're just extra biblical books.

Mhm. Yep. So they're also. Yeah. And they will also then have all sorts of other things that are going on that influence some of this stuff. So this is where we have some tradition, because we are resting upon those who have wrestled with this in the past. So

Okay. And as you mentioned, there's an Old Testament canon and a New Testament canon. Michael. Mhm. Um, so how was the Old Testament canon recognized?

I'm going to jump in here because I had the authoritative expert for my course that I took this in seminary. Uh, he wrote the book, uh, A General Introduction to the Bible. He wrote the book From God to Us. His name was Norman Geisler, and he was he's quite a respected person. And I think one of the things that he said about canon is especially important. Now, we talked about all

I think it's important to remember that the people of Israel, speaking specifically of the Hebrew Bible, they were already trained to listen for the voice of God. They knew this before they came into the land. They are going to be other voices speaking. God tells them, you might have a prophet who comes and tells you to worship another God. And they ask, well, how will we know? He gives them some tests. Their ears were already tuned, as it were. And so when a prophet shows up, he says things

And in the intertestamental period, we already see books of that are not part of Scripture. For example, in the Maccabees it talks about how there's no prophet in Israel anymore, but they're going to look forward to another one. They hope another one.

He didn't come back from the exile. Yeah.

And then the other passage. There's one that makes a tripartite division. I believe it was the Ecclesiasticus makes a three fold division of the Hebrew Bible, the law of the prophets and the writing and the writings. And and we see that in the New Testament.

Does that because he refers to that same tripartite kind of division?

Yeah. He he talks about that. Luke 24, the law of the prophets and the Psalms and the.

Psalms, which is Psalms as the writings, as the first.

Book of the.

Writings, the largest.

Book. Yeah. And and I've got one that I a passage of Scripture where you talk about the Old Testament canon is in Luke 1511. And, uh, now remember, the order of the books of the Bible in the Hebrew Bible are different than the ones that we have in our English Bible. Uh, our English Bible, the order is based on the Septuagint, but in the Hebrew Bible it was quite different. And in Luke 1511. Uh, do I have the wrong verse? I may have the wrong verse. I do have the wrong verse. Uh, but it's, uh,

It's also in Matthew chapter 2335, because I was going to talk about that same verse.

And so what you have.

Genesis two Chronicles.

Yeah. So the first book of the Hebrew Bible is Genesis. The last book of the Hebrew Bible is Second Chronicles. And these two events, the the blood of Abel, happens in Genesis. The blood of Zechariah takes place that that death takes place in Second Chronicles.

Chapter 24, verse 20. So if our listeners want to look at it. Yeah.

So what what Jesus is saying is from the first book of the Bible to the last book of the Bible, uh, there's going to be judgment for those who resisted the prophets of God because.

They always have from the beginning to the end.

Exactly. And so but on a secondary note, what Jesus is recognizing.

The boundaries of the canon, the boundaries.

Of the canon. I think that's very cool. So I would say, and I think that that Steve, we both said it's not the tests that matter as much. We've been hearing.

The voice of God in these, and they knew it.

And they received it, and they were accepted as the word of God. That's right. So now there is some people who say, there are some people who say that there was a council of Jewish people, of rabbis who determine the Bible. That's the council of Yavneh. We're going to talk about that. But when we come back. So everyone listen, this is really important stuff. We're going to talk about the Council of Yavneh. Uh, it really wasn't a council, but we're going to talk about that when

Well, let's say what it wasn't. It wasn't? Oh, we've got a lot of books laying around here. Let's pick a few and make a canon for ourselves. It was because.

There was already a.

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

Yeah. They said, well, they were asking. They already accepted the canon. We see it in the New Testament. Jesus already has accepted. That's right. The canon. But they say, well, what about the Song of Solomon? That seems a little too sensual. Right. But.

So it's really more an ongoing discussion to see what are we going to do about these books, like Steve said, is that the margins that, you know, like, do we really want to Proverbs.

Yes. Yeah. That's a little bit. They think they think Proverbs could be illogical. Why? Because one verse says answer a fool. Another verse says, don't answer a fool. Instead of understanding that it's wisdom. So they're talking about that. They're talking about disaster and unspiritual book because God's name isn't mentioned. Mentioned. Yeah, they're talking about Ecclesiastes seems kind of skeptical in places. Right. And so they're.

Taking his words as authoritative when it's Solomon's using about life. Yeah.

But the most influential rabbi there, Rabbi Akiva, he kept insisting, yes, these are the words of God. These are. And we shouldn't. He wasn't saying we should include them. He was saying, let's not get rid of them. They're in the canon already.

That's important. They already know what's between the covers of the book.

Yeah. And I always think it's important that we know when it comes to canon, what they were really doing is these new books were showing up. Remember, this is between the years 70 and 100. About 120 new books are showing up. They're called the New Testament, and they actually allude to them. And these rabbis at Yavneh, they don't like it. Right. And so what they're saying is, do these not those. We don't want to accept their authority because they're excluding the New Testament from the canon.

Uh, just just how how was it recognized?

Yeah, it was a little different, don't you think, than in.

Some ways it's different. In other ways it's the same. I think Christians hear the voice of God. They know these texts. They recognize the people who are writing them. Peter is going to refer to Paul's writings, and he's going to refer to them as the scriptures. He recognizes in them the same voice of God. And so in that sense, the the process is not that much different. They hear God speaking in these texts and they trust them.

So and even in the first century, we have Clement of Rome, who's already quoting from some of these books. And so already eight of the books are already mentioned by 95 A.D.. Bf5+, so they're clearly being already seen as authoritative very early on.

Yeah, I think it's interesting because even the New Testament is accepting it right away. Uh, here's here's what I mean by that. Jude cites Peter. Mhm. Peter cites Paul as scripture. And if you want to see that, that's in second Peter 315 and 16, he even says that Paul's hard to understand.

Like the other.

Scriptures. Yeah. Yeah.

That's amazing.

Yeah. And so he says to him, as Scripture, Paul quotes Luke as Scripture in first Timothy 518. He quotes Luke ten seven. Uh, obviously he knew about Luke's writing, but he quotes it as Scripture. And so the New Testament is actually quoting other New Testament books. And so it shows us these books were being immediately recognized as Scripture. Uh, and in many times, the letters that Paul wrote and Peter wrote and James wrote. They weren't just written to one time cyclical letters.

They were being passed around. Yeah.

Why? Because they were considered the word of God. And so I think that's so important that we recognize it was not Constantine. Uh, Trish can, uh, confirm this. We get a lot of people asking if it was the Emperor Constantine who decided on what books will be in the New Testament. Where are they getting that from?

No more than Jamnia decided on what's in the Old Testament.

I think they're getting it from a worse source. Yep, they're getting it from Dan Brown. And because at the Council of Nicaea, where Constantine was, who is.

Dan Brown, some of our listeners may not know The Da Vinci.

Code. He wrote this book of fiction. And he asserts in there that Constantine decided which books the New Testament to include, and the ones he didn't like. He excluded nothing whatsoever at the Council of Nicaea in 325. I think, uh, nothing had to do with the scripture they were dealing with the deity of the Lord Jesus. No no no no. That was not the decision. You can see much earlier on that there were the New Testament books, as you said, Jim.

Yeah, there's a number of I mean, the idea of Polycarp acknowledged 15 of the books by 108, and it just keeps on exponentially getting better. Now, there are just like the Old Testament, some books that are so at the margin second Peter and some others, but generally, by and large, there was wide acceptance of both.

Nobody's disputing the.

Gospels, right?

Just like nobody disputed the Torah.

But today they say we found this gospel, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Yeah. Or the Gospel of Judas.

Competing Christianity's at that time, and some are suppressed. But is that what's actually happening? Maybe they were put away because they were untruthful and the church recognized there's not the ring of truth in these gospels. Put them aside. These are the ones we can trust.

Exactly. And moreover, some of them are really late. Yes. Very late. In fact, there are no early ones. And strange. They're they're their second, third, fourth centuries. It's not like they were there from the beginning. These other gospels, they're just they're actually Gnostic books that the Gnostics are saying, oh, wait, wait, we just found this book. It was written by Peter. They're making this up, right? And and they're adding it

I think that's key. The idea that is there somebody that we know of that's apostolic authority that's associated with these books? Yeah. Somebody who saw Jesus, somebody who was with Jesus, someone who was with the disciples, that kind of thing.

So the gospel of Mark really reflects what Peter, Peter and the Gospel of Luke is linked to. Paul. Paul authorized, I believe the writing of Luke acts to for him to go to the Greco-Roman world and have a book that he can show about the church and Jesus, Jesus, and then the church. And so there those books are linked to apostles. And so that's what they're looking for. Does this book, whether an apostle wrote it or not? Does it have the ring of apostolic authority?

That's not very different from what's going on in the Hebrew Bible, the Torah. Moses wrote it. No one's going to dispute that. Yeah. And there are other attestations of these books. Samuel, Jeremiah, Isaiah. We know these are authoritative men who speak with God's authority, not their own. That's why their writings are trustworthy.

So that's what it is. What and how.

Was the order of the New Testament determined? That's in our English Bible. Is that the.

That's a very good question, because most of the time people are surprised that it's not by when they were written. It's often by size. Roman starts out as one of the largest of Paul's letters, and we get smaller and smaller as we go. So it's not on a linear chronological timeline, but they do.

Well, first you have the Gospels. There's some sort of chronology. You get the Gospels.

Then acts.

Then you get acts. I mean, when I teach acts, I always tell everyone. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to read the first verses of Romans and see if you know what this means. If you don't have the book of Acts, it's the great bridge from the Gospels to the epistles. And, and so. And then you get the letters. So you've got the story of Jesus, the story of the church, the letters of the church, and then the culmination with the book of revelation. So it's size and chronology in a sense.

There's a little bit of both. But the idea that, you know, Galatians is probably one of the early ones, how come it's not first after we read the book of acts? Yeah, it's because they were.

It was smaller than.

Romans, than Romans. And Romans is a very key book. Yeah.

So that's how it was. And I think that that's really important. But there are other books there. The in-between books.

Yes, several, several people asked and wanted to know why the Apocrypha is not included in some Bibles. Yeah.

I think the best answer for Protestant Christians is that the Jewish community never accepted these books as authoritative scripture. The original Bible of the early church is the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew Bible did not include these books, the apocryphal books in their canon. And so, as the church takes it over, they take with them the books that the the Old Testament believers trusted.

Yeah, some people think that the reason the Apocrypha is included in some Bibles is because the Septuagint had it, but it really didn't. The earliest records we have from Josephus and others, where it talks about the books of the Bible in the Septuagint, did not include the Apocrypha.

Josephus is very careful to enumerate the books, and they don't include the apocryphal books.

And so what happened was in the fourth century or so, there was a version, a copy of the Septuagint made that included the Apocrypha, not the original, but a later cop. And then they said, well, let's conclude these two because they're holy books. And somehow that's I think, let's get gets translated into the Vulgate.

It's important Jerome understood a distinction.

Don't know what the Vulgate is. It's a Roman, a Latin version that Jerome did in the fourth or fifth century.

That's right. And he understood the distinction. Yeah. And he made notes and separated out those apocryphal books. Yeah. But as they were published and republished and reprinted and reprinted, those notes and those distinctions fell away and people just worked them right in. Yeah.

They were just kind of good religious books.

They're very kind of intriguing reads. I remember when I was in seminary, I read the Apocrypha because it's kind of like, what do we do with these books? I remember reading The Book of Judith and thinking, wow, this would make a great movie. Yeah. It's like, wow. Why? Why does somebody take this up? But now again, it's not authoritative. It's not inspired. It's not inerrant, but it just kind of is an interesting read in terms of a narrative story.

And the book of First Maccabees is very helpful. History historically. Yeah. But nevertheless, it is not. And in fact first Second Maccabees is cited in the book of Hebrews in Hebrews 1132 through 40. It mentions, uh, a woman, uh, who those who were were looking for a better resurrection, and they refused to disobey God. That's a reference to Hannah and her sons from the Maccabees. So there are things that were true that happened in them, but they are

How how do they get out?

Yeah.

Well, here's what happens. They really were not accepted as the Bible. And then the Reformation comes along and they say sola scriptura and some of these doctrines being taught are not in the Bible. And so we're not going to believe them anymore. And so in the Counter Reformation, the church says, well, they may not be taught in the Bible, but they're taught in the Apocrypha. And so what are we going to do? We're going to make sure the Apocrypha is now we're going to do.

Scripture, right?

Yeah.

So those are now called the deuterocanonicals Canonicals. A second cannon, not lower than, but alongside equal of authority to the first cannon. The Council of Trent declares.

So you have, like an Old Testament canon, an Inter-testamental canon, which is the Apocrypha, right? According to the authority of the church and then the New Testament canon. But it is it's really a 16th century addition to the Bible. It is not original to the Bible. So it was it was over an argument about doctrine. They said, well, we're going to find verses that back it up. It's in the Apocrypha. Let's put it in now. So that's

There is that gap of knowledge between when Ezra passed off the scene to when we come to Jesus and John the Baptist. So the Book of Maccabees does kind of fill us in with some of those details. Yeah, I.

Think that that is really important that we recognize that, that that it's not a bad thing to read. It's just not the authoritative word of God. And there are many people who listen to this, and they would come from a different tradition, and they they would like to read the Bible and they have the Apocrypha. I say go for it, read it. But the main thing to read, read the scriptures. You know, what you want to do is read God's authoritative Word of God. Now there's a

Just like we would read ancient Near Eastern texts from the time of the Old Testament to kind of fill us in with details or a good.

Devotional that we love.

Yeah, but what we want to really read is the Word of God, the Bible, which are the wonderful words of life. We're going to be right back with more of your questions right here on on Open Line, my guest, Jim Coakley, Steve Sanchez, Trish McMillan's kind of riding herd, making sure we stay on top of things. Uh, my name is Michael Radonich. Stay with us. We'll be right back. We're so glad that Febc partners with Open Line with

Dawg. That's fake dawg.

Welcome back to Open Line. My name is Michael Melnick, and I am so glad you're listening today to this great pre-recorded discussion. We're talking about how we got the Word of God. The first hour was about the inspiration and authority of the Bible. If you missed it, go back to the website and listen online or download the podcast. I think you're really going to like it. This hour of focusing on how we got the Bible producer Trish McMillan is here. Jim Coakley is my guest. He's a

All right, Elizabeth Rodas in North Carolina, she listens on the mobile app and says, what? Why was the book of the Psalms included in the Bible if it's primarily songs? Okay, who wants to take that one?

You know the Psalms. The Psalms breathe with emotion. And they they live in the world of joy and pain and delight and suffering. And I like to read the Psalms and say to myself, this is this is God showing me how to worship, how to delight in him, how to deal with pain, how to complain, and at the same time have faith in the one who promises to take care of me. Without the Psalms, we'd lose a lot in how we relate to God. A lot of that instruction.

That's what I love about the whole scriptures, is because we have something for everybody, so to speak. We have history time. We have letters. If you want to know exactly what to do. But then we also have these wisdom books that also kind of especially with the Psalms, give us what's if I if I'm in pain, if I have been suffering, what words can I have? Well, I can use the psalmist to kind of voice back to God, what I'm experiencing. And so it's a great thing to have in the scriptures.

Okay, I'm going to go back to what we were asked earlier by someone. How do they decide which books of the canon in the Hebrew Bible? One of the things I think that caused the remnant of Israel, the faithful of Israel, to receive these books immediately is that they were looking for a messianic message. And there is a messianic message. I believe in every book of the

From Moses, which is earthly.

Long period of time. But then they were made into a book after the return from exile. And one of the key themes of the Book of Psalms is the king. Yes. And some of those who hold something called form criticism have called those royal psalms, even if that's right, if they're royal psalms, who's the king in the Post-exilic period, there is no king there waiting for the return, the coming of the king. And and so the king. This is about the Messiah. And it's it's designed to teach

It's wonderful too, because Psalm one, I think we have read the word keep the law, but then Psalm two, kiss the son, you know, worship him. And then Psalm eight, you know the king's rage. And so you're right. There's something going on here as the kings are raging. Yeah, something about Psalm one.

As you read the word, guess what? You're going to find Psalm two. You're going to find, uh, the king. Yeah. So that's that's what I would say about why the Psalms were included.

Okay. So with that, so you have these Psalms that are written over a long period of time will move kind of into transmission. How we actually got the written word of God are those Psalms being written down and passed out in pieces of paper? I mean, how how are people knowing these? How have they collected all of these Psalms or any of the other Old Testament, especially books? Um, how was that passed down from generation to generation?

We really don't have a whole lot of information about that because we don't have the manuscripts, the transmission of those texts from that time. But we do know, as we already talked about, that there is time that's developed even in Proverbs. You get to the end of the book of Proverbs, that these are the Proverbs of Solomon in which the men of Hezekiah collected. It's like, huh?

Yeah. And then there's structure, even to the book of Proverbs, the way it's put together. The the point of that is that we don't know how they preserved, but they did preserve Psalm 90, and they did preserve the Psalms of David, and they did preserve the Psalms of Asaph. And what happens is at the end they're put into a book and they're structured there's five volumes to the book of Psalms and so forth. I always think that probably someone like Isaiah, he kept a journal and he

It's an anthology. It's his greatest hits. But it's now but now it has structure.

It's got structure purpose. Yeah. So, so that's why how it was I.

Don't.

We don't know. We don't.

Know. But they're copying.

They're passing down. And later generations are aware of the copies that they have.

We have things like the Torah where it says that Joshua copied it.

Right.

There are things that are copied, and that's how it was done.

But so is this mostly oral tradition or. We don't know that either. I mean, it was a different time where we weren't writing notes down on various electronic devices. So we they were thinking.

No, but they were.

Capable of writing. Yeah. I mean, I think writing is key, and Israel's not the only culture in the ancient Near East. There are lots of others, and they're all writing too. And so the idea that it's just an oral tradition, I don't think that goes far enough. It doesn't give enough credit, if you will, to the to the people of the land. Things are being spoken and they have

So, Moses, when he's writing the Pentateuch.

Clearly he's.

Got genealogies that that were written down that he's using. There may have been some stories that he wrote down about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that weren't written. Maybe they were, but they were passed down to him from Jochebed, his mom, who raised him. And so he knew some of the stories of, of Israel.

And we also know the kings were supposed to write it. Here's Deuteronomy chapter 17, verse 18. Now it should come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom. He shall write for himself a copy of this law and a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. So we already know that kings and leaders were supposed to rewrite what was passed down from Moses.

And Moses was commanded to write.

It was commanded to write it. And so he is writing going on now. How do they preserve it? On what materials? Now here it mentions a scroll. Was it on clay tablets? Was it on animal skins? Was it on papyrus? All these things? That's the kind of stuff we're kind of missing in terms of the material culture that this stuff was written on. Yeah.

So I think it's vital that we know that even if there were oral traditions, by the time they get into the Bible.

Written down there, written down.

And passed down.

And aren't you thankful that you have the Word of God written down? Yeah. I mean, you don't have to rely on your memory, your mood. You turn to a book. This is what it says. There's confidence that it's the word of God and you move forward. Yeah.

I do think, though, there are some things that do show that there was a morality to these stories, especially because their structures repeated kind of patterns. And it's like you could see how a storyteller could have memory aids to kind of tell the story of judges or tell the story of Joshua with these kind of devices that are there. Now, of course, they did ultimately write them down, but I think there is Aids for oral storytelling of the scriptures.

Yeah, yeah.

So all right, um, kind of moving into translations and some of those things. We'll start with the King James controversy. Um, and some contention about, um, that text. Um, yeah. Maybe I'll just start there and let you take it from there. What are some of the controversies surrounding that? Do we get a lot of questions about this?

The issue that people say now, there are most people who say, oh, we should keep the King James as the Authorized Version, as the only true Bible they're saying, because they like the archaic language.

Right. It feels more spiritual when they read it.

But that's it.

Yeah, that's really not what drives a lot of this controversy. What drives it? And that's why there can be a new King James Version is particularly with the New Testament. It was believed that the, the, the way to understand it, that there were families of texts of ancient texts of the New Testament and the Byzantine family from the Byzantine church had the most of those. In fact, they had they just because that was really the only one that they had, it kept getting copied over and over and

He's teasing us.

Cliffhanger.

You want to know what happened? Why? We have other versions. This is what we'll tell you when we come back. You're listening to Steve Sanchez, Jim Coakley, Trish McMillan and me, Michael Wright. So don't go away. If you want to know why there's this controversy about the King James Bible. Stay with us. This is open line. People frequently think of Christmas as a Christian holiday and Hanukkah as a Jewish celebration. But if we really understood Christmas, we see

We start finding new manuscripts. There are new manuscripts, and when they're analyzed.

They're really old manuscripts, older.

Manuscripts. And the general assumption is that if it's older, it's closer to the original, less opportunity for things to change. People start to incorporate these new manuscripts into new editions of the Greek New Testament, which then they use to translate new versions of the New Testament in other languages.

And so people are thinking to me, they always say, well, the King James had this verse this way, and now it's taken out.

As if someone did that intentionally to ruin.

Something. Yeah, to take something out.

I'm thinking of the verse in First John. Uh, people complain to me about that. The verse was taken out about, uh, the Trinity. Yeah. The Trinity in verse six, uh, Jesus the Messiah. He is the one who came by water and blood and not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the spirit is the one who testifies, because the spirit is the truth. When I look at the footnote here in my Bible, it says other manuscripts include these testify in heaven, the father, the word, and

So let's talk about the Trinity. Yeah.

And they stuck those words in. And now we find the earlier manuscripts who.

Say, no, not there.

That's not there. So when we do a modern translation that's based on the earliest and best versions, it's not going to have that. They'll put it in a footnote.

That's right. Yeah.

In some cases mine actually doesn't have it in the footnote.

Oh, it doesn't even have it in the footnote. That's the ESV.

The Hcsb at least gives you the footnote for all the people that are going to have a heart attack when they don't see that. But that's because it wasn't in the earliest and the best manuscripts. So.

But let's talk though we're only talking about a handful of these kind of major passages like first John five six, like the woman caught in adultery. John chapter eight, like the ending of the gospel of Mark. Those are the three biggies. But then we're really talking about minor kind of issues. Did they say Lord Jesus Christ or just say Jesus Christ? Okay, we're not changing at all anything about who Jesus Christ is. It's just maybe a little label that might be at issue.

Okay, so people get mad about Westcott and Hort. What was the role of Westcott and Hort in this development of New Testament manuscripts?

These guys are compiling a new Greek text, a new critical Greek text, and using that term in the best sense of the word, that then becomes the text that modern translations are used from. Yeah.

So what they're doing is they're working with the earliest.

That's right.

And so people are going to want to say bad things about them. I don't know anything about their spiritual life. I don't know anything about what kind of people they were. I just.

Never got people say.

Not so good things.

Yeah, I don't know.

But I do know this. They produced the best and earliest manuscripts. And as more and more study has been done, they find they found earlier ones and even better tests. And so that's that's why the modern. That's why I say you need a modern translation, because we don't want to treat people often treated the Byzantine text as if it was the very thing that Paul wrote or that Matthew wrote, and it wasn't.

I think it's important.

You've said this already just to repeat it. We're talking about a New Testament conversation, whether it's a King James or an ESV or a Net Bible, the Old Testament, we're depending all on the same manuscript, the Leningrad Codex. That's the one everyone is using. So this is basically a New Testament conversation.

Yeah.

And of course, there are variant readings in the Old Testament.

Of course there are.

And I know, for example, in the hcsb the version I use, they will sometimes take a well, almost every Christian Bible I know translates Psalm 22 as they pierced my hands and my feet. 2216 however, in the Masoretic Text it says, as a lion, my hands and my feet. And so we go with the variant reading there. The thing is, we're doing good textual criticism. That's exactly that's the point. And we want to base our Bibles on the best, earliest, strongest understanding of what the original text said.

That's right. And Psalm one 4513 is longer in modern versions, in many cases, because one of the Dead Sea scroll fragments suggests that, hey, this extra verse has an extra few lines to it. And we've now found that that wasn't discovered until 48, 47, 48. And now we add that back in. Yeah, it's been preserved for us.

That's it.

So that's that's what we're doing. And so I think that King James was a great translation. It was beautiful in its day. There are better translations today. And we would do well to use a good modern translation.

If somebody says, I love the King James because of its cadence, because it's, you know, that that's great. But if you say, well, it's the authorized text, then you shouldn't be reading any others. I think that goes beyond a mistake. The and by the way.

I think the new King James Version is one of the best translations.

Of the Old Testament. Yep. Yeah.

So King James is actually easier to memorize than a lot of the other ones are because of the cadence and the English that they had. So it's a very good translation. Yeah.

All right. Roger had asked us if there regarding the differences between the modern translations, if you could give him a good reference material that will help them better understand the differences between the modern Bible translations, what are the what are the differences that you would say in the modern ones?

The thing we talk about with Bible translation is a formal versus functional. Formal are translations that are trying to follow as closely as they can. The original source language, Greek or Hebrew functional ones, are ones that are trying to get a little bit more the sense of what's being communicated, rather than necessarily the same word order or things like that. And a lot of times people think, oh, the more formal is the better, but that's not always

So what we're saying is that some are much more rigid in English.

Let's just stick to English.

And others want to say and that would be a a formal translation and then others would be more dynamic equivalence. How would we say the very same thing, but say it as we speak today in English?

Every translation is on a spectrum. A formal or that dynamic side. It's not that they're not inspired. Sometimes people will say, well, that one's too far and that one, it's not inspired. No, no, no, it's a translator. Translation committee. Trying to take those words from the original language and render them in a manner that you can understand easily.

That's all it is. And so. Okay, so favorite translations.

Boy, I, I was what am I doing if I'm studying the trying to read in English what's underlying the Greek and Hebrew? I read the New American Standard, but I also read a lot of other translations as well.

I'm using the ESV these days. I grew up on the new King James. I like the new Living Translation at times. I've been using one produced by Tyndale, the Immerse Bible, and it gives you a nice read. When I need detail study, I often turn back to my MNAs.

I like the New American Standard for detailed study. I like the ESV. It's also a very good. I think it's a formal translation, very accurate. I use on a daily basis the Holman Christian Standard Bible, which has now been revised.

Christian Standard, Bible Standard.

CSB, the CSB, and I haven't really read through the new version yet, but I still like the Holman CSB, the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Uh, I think balances formal and easy to they like.

To call it the optimal translation trying to balance between formal and.

Functional. They're a.

Little marketing.

There.

Thanks for this program today. Thank you Jim. Thank you, Steve, for joining me. That was Jim Coakley Steve Sanchez thanks Trish for riding herd, getting this all together for us, making sure that we answered the questions that you sent in. Remember, you can keep in touch with Open Line during the week by going to our website, Openline radio.org. That page has everything you need, whether it's past programs, email links, or if you want to send your questions in, there's