How did the New Testament come to be?
The ancient writings that comprise the New Testament are critical for understanding the life, teachings, and impact of Jesus of Nazareth, all of which are central to Christianity. But how were these texts circulated, collected, and given their canonical status? Is the New Testament a trustworthy source for learning about Jesus and the early church?
New Testament scholar Charles L. Quarles will join us to address the most pressing questions regarding the study of New Testament texts, their transmission, and their collection into the canon.
Hi friend, thanks so much for downloading this broadcast and it is my hope that you'll hear something that will challenge you, grow you up in him, and get you out into the marketplace of ideas. But before you start listening, let me take a moment and tell you what this month's truth tool is. It's the Mediterranean Sea Rules by Robert Morgan. I talked to him often on the air because he's such a superb writer, and in this particular book, he takes the story of Paul's shipwreck, recorded in the book of acts, and gives us ten principles of how we push through the storm, learning to trust in God and all that he has done for us. It's a magnificent book. It's a short book, and in typical Robert Morgan writing style, it is a powerful book. I strongly recommend that you have a copy of The Mediterranean Sea Rules, because trust me, every single one of us will find ourselves on stormy seas at some point in our voyage through life. As for your copy of The Mediterranean Sea Rules by calling 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or go online to in the market with Janet Parshall. Scroll to the bottom of the page. There's the book, click it on, Make Your Gift and we'll send you a copy. My way of saying thank you because we are listener supported radio. Your gifts keep this broadcast on the air. By the way, if you'd like to give regularly, you're called a partial partner. You give every single month a level of your own choosing. You always get the truth tool. But in addition, I'll send out a weekly newsletter that only my partial partners get. It contains my writing and a little audio piece as well. So pray about it and thanks in advance. Just call 877 Janet 58 or online at In the Market with Janet Parshall. Again the truth tool, the Mediterranean Sea rules. Thanks so much. And now please enjoy the broadcast. Hi friends. This is Janet Parshall and I want to welcome you to the best of in the market. Today's program is prerecorded so our phone lines are not open. But I do hope you'll enjoy today's edition of the Best of In the Market with Janet Parshall.
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Hi, friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. I am so glad we're going to spend the hour together, because we're going to talk about a subject that should be so precious, so near and dear to the heart of every believer. And that is the Word of God. Transcendent, immutable, inerrant, applies to all people in all times, in all places. The word is as powerful yesterday as it is today as it will be tomorrow. And it really and truly is a book that does so many things in our lives. The Bible describes itself in a myriad of ways, not the least of which is its illuminating power a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. But you know, when someone stops you in that marketplace of ideas and oh, by the way, friend to friend, you are getting out there, right? You're out there influencing and occupying and letting your light so shine before men and living such good lives among the pagans, right? You're doing all of that? I hope so, you're going to be asked. Trust me. You're going to be asked about this book you Bible thumpers believe in. And if you are, thank you, Jude. Going to contend for the faith, then are you prepared to give a reason for the validity, the historicity, the reliability of the Word of God and in truth between brothers and sisters? This is where you and I get stuck so often. What is the canon? What is the text? Are there mistakes? Are there errors? Are things that were put in that shouldn't have been put in? Are there things that were left out that should have been put in? And why are there just the four gospels? And what about the Apocrypha and all of those other books? And I've already got your brain going, don't I? Well, we have a fabulous teacher this hour who's going to walk us through all of this? Doctor Charles Quarles is with us. He's an experienced pastor, missionary, and theological educator. He served as senior pastor of three churches in North Mississippi and East Tennessee for over ten years. He serves as director of the Caskey Center for Biblical Text and Translation, Research, Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology, as well as the Charles Page Chair of Biblical Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. And on my information page, I have not one but two books of doctor quarrels. One is called New Testament Textual Criticism for the 21st century A Practical Guide. Come back here. This is not. You don't have to have a PhD or an MDiv or a doctorate of theology. This is for you and me. People who are supposed to be in that word and allowing God to write it on the tablets of our heart. But let's get into how we study this word. And the second is called 40 questions about the Text and Canon of the New Testament. We're going to find out the distinction between those two words. And then it's just what it says. There are 40 wonderful, thought provoking questions in that book as well, so I couldn't choose. That's why I put both of them on the information page, because I think they're going to be very germane to our conversation. So first and foremost, Doctor Quarles, thank you for giving me permission to call you Chuck. Honor should be given to whom honor is due. And I appreciate your allowing me to call you that. And I have to ask you personally, with all the things that you've done, pastor, missionary, theological educator, there's a particular passion evidenced in your writing about the New Testament in particular. Tell me why.
My focus is mainly on the Gospels of the New Testament. Just because I adore the Lord Jesus and I enjoy studying his life and teachings. Nothing moves me quite like that.
That's marvelous. And was I right when I talked about these books for the common man? In other words, you don't have to be a student at southeastern to be able to use these as your college textbooks. These are books that in my private time, I could read along with the word.
Right. And that's especially true of the 40 questions book. The 40 questions book was written for college students, but also for the average guy on the street to help them understand some really important questions about the New Testament. I wrote the half dealing with the text of the New Testament, and my colleague Scott Kellum wrote the half related to canon issues.
Good. Thank you for explaining that to me. Well, I want to start in the text part, and I'm going to ask because you're talking to a wide group of people from Guam all the way over there to the Cayman Islands, and a boatload of people in between. And my friends are at various levels in their walk with the Lord, some brand new, some been walking with him for 50 years. And these kinds of questions, I think are good for the beginner or the one who's mature in Christ. So I want to do some, and at times some of my questions may be rudimentary, but I think that's good because it'll help us all grow up in him. So when we talk about this, there's a whole study here that I find absolutely fascinating. And honestly, in truth, I've never found a way to distill it to make it kind of colloquial for radio conversation. But when we start talking about the text itself and how it's been preserved and why it can be reliable. So that's a really good place to start. I watched this fascinating documentary about little parts of the Codex and little parts of the manuscript there, in museums all over Europe. What do we have today that takes us back as close as we can get to the original text of the Gospels?
Well, we have a wealth of information. In fact, we have more information for restoring the original text of the New Testament than any other ancient document. We have about 5800 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. And of course, the New Testament was originally written in Greek. So when we talk about the Greek New Testament, we're not talking about a translation into Greek. We're talking about the original text itself. Uh, and many of these thousands of manuscripts are very, very early. Uh, to give you an example, we have a papyrus fragment of five verses in John 18 that has been dated by Paleographers Refers to A.D. 125. It's believed to be our earliest manuscript of the Greek New Testament, and most scholars date the Gospel of John to the late 80s early 90s. I would date it earlier, but if we went with that date up in palaeography, which is a study of the way scribes write, and by looking at their handwriting, you can date a document. And palaeography. We usually talk about a window of accuracy of plus or -25 years. So if we go to the earlier part of that papyrus, 52 could have been written as early as A.D. 100. In other words, a decade after most scholars would date the Gospel of John.
Wow. Unbelievable. And when you find, for example, in that passage that goes back to 125 A.D., and if I were to open my Bible today, would what I read on that piece of papyrus match what's in my Bible today.
Yes, it would. It would match it very, very closely. And P52 is a small fragment. We have others that are much more extensive that are almost as early.
Unbelievable. Wow, what a great way to start our conversation. We have the privilege of spending the entire hour with the doctor charged Charles Quails. And I want two books for your reference to go into your legacy library. One of them is called New Testament. Textual criticism will tell you what that is later on for the 21st century A Practical Guide, and the second, 40 questions about the text and canon of the New Testament. This is a way for us to really fall even more deeply in love with His Word back after this. Are you going through a storm right now? Do you feel lost at sea? That's why I've chosen the Mediterranean Sea Rules. As this month's truth tool, Robert Morgan reveals principles that will help you navigate rough waters. Learn how God is always with you through the storm. As for your copy of the Mediterranean Sea Rules, when you give a gift of any amount to in the market, call eight 7758, that's eight 7758 or go online to in the market with Janet Parshall. Doctor Charles Quails is with us. He serves as research professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he's the author of, among many books, Matthew in the Evangelical Biblical Theological Commentary. We're taking a look at how we got the Bible and the Word of God, and why we can, in fact, trust it. So I want to linger a little bit longer. So you just talked about some of the manuscripts. Chuck, let me ask you about how we came into possession of some of these manuscripts. You know, we talk about the finding of the shepherd boy out in the hills and finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran. How did we find these parchments, these pieces of paper, the manuscripts?
Well, many of them were purchased by manuscript hunters in Egypt. Most of the papyrus fragments have been preserved for us exclusively in Egypt, because only the climate there really helps with their preservation. Other parts of the world have too much moisture in the air, and so papyrus deteriorates much more quickly. We have found a few fragments elsewhere, but they're mainly from Egypt. But in addition to the papyrus manuscripts, we also have magical texts that were written on parchment, and they mainly have been preserved in monastery libraries for centuries. An example of this would be Codex Vaticanus. That's an almost complete manuscript of the New Testament that dates back to 8325, and it's generally considered to be our most accurate and reliable manuscript of the New Testament. But then the earliest complete manuscript of the New Testament is Codex Sinaiticus, that dates to around 350 A.D..
Wow. That's amazing. So just to put that in perspective. So let me stick with the 350 A.D. date for a minute. When was the last book of the Bible written? So in other words, the last scribe writing it down versus that manuscript that was discovered in 350?
Yeah. Well, most would say that the final book of the New Testament was the Book of Revelation. And there's debate about whether that was written in the 90s or possibly even before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But we're talking about less than three centuries from the final book of the New Testament for Codex Sinaiticus.
Okay, So then that's absolutely fascinating, by the way. And I'm trying to think of this as if I were a skeptic or a cynic, and I, I push back against the fact that we use the word of God as the straight stick of truth, to quote Dwight Moody. And the skeptic goes, but if I don't believe in your book, then you're not going to win me by prooftexting what the word has to say. So if I'm looking for extra biblical evidence, I've already got the idea that there's a proximity between the last date of the book written in the New Testament, and this finding of the manuscript in 350 A.D. from a historical perspective, that's a pretty short gap, is it not?
It's a very short gap when you contrast that with the evidence that we have to reconstruct, say, the original text of the writings of Josephus and Josephus is that first century Jew who wrote a history of the Jews, and he wrote a book about the war of the Jews and their rebellion against Rome. And a lot of what we know about first century Palestine comes from the writings of Josephus. But what a lot of people don't realize is that most of the text of Josephus is reconstructed from manuscripts dating to from the 10th to the 12th century, over a thousand years after Josephus wrote. We only have one early text of Josephus writings in Greek, and it's a tiny little fragment that covers the span of about two verses. So when you compare the great antiquity and the vast number of manuscripts that we have of the Greek New Testament to evidence for any other ancient book, there's really no comparison. It's amazing how God, in his gracious providence, has prepared these manuscripts for us in order to protect His Word, so that we could know it today.
Amen. What a great observation on your part. I love that so. And then again, if you not only look at what you just said, Chuck, but if you add to that archaeological. The extra biblical accounts. Josephus is a perfect example. You have what we would call in the law, a preponderance of evidence that these are scriptures that are reliable and can be trusted.
Yes, absolutely. Now, of course, there are differing voices out there, but I hope the audience will know how to distinguish truth from error, because there are people with an agenda who mislead when it comes to the ancient manuscripts. An example of this would be a 2015 article by Kurt Eichenwald, which was titled The Bible So Misunderstood, it's a sin. And in that article he said this. He said, no television preacher has ever read the Bible. Neither has any evangelical politician. Neither has the Pope. Neither have I and neither have you. At best, all we've read is a bad translation. A translation of translations of translations of Hand-copied, copies of copies, of copies of copies, and on and on. Hundreds of times. And that statement is just patently false. First of all, when we read the scriptures today, we're not reading a translation of a translation. We're reading an English translation of the ancient Greek text. Furthermore, this idea that we're reading a translation based on hand-copied copies of copies of copies, of copies of copies, and hundreds of times on and on is ludicrous. That would mean that from the time the New Testament was complete, every two years, a scribe would have to recopy the New Testament and never consult a manuscript that was older than two years old. And I don't know any even skeptical scholar who sees the transmission of the New Testament in those terms. We have examples of scribes who are copying manuscripts that are many centuries old, not the most recent ones.
Wow. Let me take a break and come right back. By the way, one of the things I find so encouraging about a conversation like this is it helps you remember that there is every reason for us never to be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You don't have to worry about skeptics and cynics trying to deride, mislead, and foment mythology to denigrate the power of the word. Remember, the Bible doesn't contain the Word of God. It is the Word of God. And that's a distinction with a profound difference. Doctor Charles Quarles is with us. We're going to take a break. Come right back after this. We are visiting with Doctor Charles Quarles. He serves as director of the Caskey Center for Biblical Text and Translation, Research, professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology, all at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. And we're discussing the validity of the New Testament, by the way, and we're talking about the manuscript. So I'm glad you took us where you did, Chuck, just before the break, talking about the scribes. And again, those are hundreds of years hence from some of the parchments that we've got. But you make the point that these scribes were not copyists. They were in fact copyists. They weren't copy machines. That's a distinction you make. Why?
Well, in the age of printing, we can very quickly make a completely accurate, picture perfect replica of another document. But for the first millennium and a half of church history, there were no printing presses. Uh, in order for manuscripts to be copied, they had to be copied by hand. And unfortunately, unlike the apostles and their associates that were directly inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the New Testament, there was no inspiration of the scribes who were copying the text. They were fallible human beings like me and you. And if we have ever hand copied a lengthy document ourselves, we know that we messed it up some, that we didn't get everything exactly right. And the ancient scribes admit that sometimes in their manuscripts they confess that they're weary and that they're not doing their best work, that they're struggling not to fall asleep, and they're not even sure what their hand is writing and that kind of thing. And so we've got to remember that to err is human. And the human copyists did sometimes make mistakes, despite the fact that they were giving the task their very best effort. And despite the fact that many of them were very highly skilled, they were fallible human beings. And that's what results in there being some differences in the wording of our manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. And when there are differences in that wording, then scholars have to compare the differences and then seek to determine which reading was the one originally penned by, say, Paul or Matthew or John.
So how did they do that?
Well, through a discipline called textual criticism. Now when we hear the word criticism, we can get a very negative impression. We think that somebody's criticizing the Bible. And so the critics must be academicians and their regalia trying to hide their horns under their mortarboards and hide their tails under their academic robes, and they're just out to attack the New Testament. But that's not true at all. The word criticism is being used here in a technical sense, to refer to a science of restoring the original wording of an ancient document. And textual criticism has to be practiced on any ancient document, whether we're talking about Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or we're talking about the New Testament. And there are standard approaches throughout the field. One of the things obviously you want to do is say, okay, which reading is supported by our oldest manuscripts because our oldest Manuscripts probably have fewer generations of copies between them and the original than later manuscripts do, so that there is less opportunity for scribal error to enter the picture. Uh. Another thing you'll want to look at is, well, what is the reading of the most reliable manuscripts? Um, what reading is shared in manuscripts from many different parts of the world all at the same time, because that's probably a very ancient reading, too. But then you also look at questions of, okay, based on what we know of this New Testament author's theology and his grammar and style and vocabulary, which of the readings in the ancient manuscript best fits? And then we also say, what kinds of errors were scribes most likely to make? Uh, therefore, what changes were most likely to enter their copies? And through all of those factors, we can restore the original wording of the Greek New Testament with a very high degree of accuracy.
Fascinating. So this takes us to another area that becomes a quagmire for a lot of people who feel that their need is to defend the scriptures, and that is the concept of error. So let me talk about this first at the 35,000 foot, if I can, please. So when you talk about the the human factor that comes into this, the fatigue, the sleepiness, the um, copyists, not copy machines are any wide question are any of the so-called conflicts in Scripture significantly undermining the basic orthodoxy of Christianity, or are these minor distinctions?
Okay. It depends on what you mean by the question. If we're talking about the theology of the New Testament as a whole, no, it's never impacted us. I could preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus from any ancient manuscript or any critical edition of the Greek New Testament, without compromise, without the need to revise. Furthermore, there is no ancient manuscript of the Greek New Testament that denies the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, his sacrificial death. All of the essentials are there in every ancient manuscript.
Such an important answer, and I want my friends to be encouraged by that. We're going to take a break and come right back. These are absolutely fascinating books on what I think is an absolutely fascinating topic. Check it out. Two of them. New Testament textual criticism for the 21st century. You just heard Doctor Quarles talk about what textual criticism means. And then the second book is 40 questions about the text and canon of the New Testament. My suggestion, part of your legacy library needs to be there back after this. What's the goal of in the market? I'll tell you in the market equips men and women to think critically and act biblically. Why do we do this? So that we can be confident when speaking the truth in a confused culture? Are you willing to stand with me? Become a partial partner today, and enjoy exclusive benefits only my partners receive while making an impact for the Kingdom? Call 877 Janet 58 or go online to in the market with Janet Parshall. We have the privilege of spending the hour with Doctor Charles Quarles. He's an experienced pastor, missionary and theological educator. He served as senior pastor of three churches in North Mississippi and East Tennessee for over a decade. He serves as director of the center for Biblical Text and Translation Research, Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology, and Charles Page, chair of Biblical theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He joins us today as a prolific author. But two books that go to the heart of our subject was really and truly is about trusting the reliability, the historicity of the scriptures. The book number one is called New Testament Textual Criticism for the 21st century A Practical Guide. And the second is 40 Questions about the Text and Canon of the New Testament. So I want to pick up exactly where we left off. And, Chuck, I have to tell you, we could talk for ten hours and I wouldn't even broach a third. I think of what are in these two books. So thank you so much for the way you're answering the questions with such clarity and such assurance. I know that's comforting. So many of our listeners. So when we talk about the fact that there's this human aspect of this, I. I mean, there's no other book under Heaven whereby it was written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as I said before. God breathed, inspired. Inerrant. Transcendent. The sword. All of these wonderful descriptors of what the word is all about. But there is this human being that had to play a role that wrote it down. Whether it's the writers of the New Testament and the authors of the gospel, or whether it's those who are working on the manuscripts down the road, so we can understand a little bit where the inspiration of the Holy Spirit comes in. When the 66 books or the New Testament books are being written, 66 for that matter. But I'll just focus on the New Testament. But when we moved to the area of air for scribes writing it down, is there a distinction between the possibility of any of the original authors of the New Testament having put down things that were in air minor, though they might have been, versus the possibility of the scribes going forward? In other words, is there a chasm of credibility that was created there?
An important question and on the possibility of error with the New Testament authors. No, but possibility of error with the New Testament copyist? Yes. The New Testament clearly affirms the inspiration and inerrancy of the New Testament text as originally given by God, but it never promises that those who are producing the hand copies will never make an error. It's just a fact of history that they do. Whenever we find differences of any substance between the ancient manuscripts, then somebody had to have changed something. Somebody had to have gotten it wrong. Now I am a biblical inerrant. But when an evangelical scholar affirms biblical inerrancy, he is usually affirming what is described as biblical inerrancy, and a famous document called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and the Chicago Statement in article ten says, we affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture. That is, the Epistle to the Ephesians, actually written by Paul. The Gospel of Matthew actually written by Matthew. But then it adds, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. And so the original text is free from error. The later copies have error mingled with them. But we are convinced that God and His gracious providence has so preserved his Word through history that by comparing the readings and the ancient Manuscripts, we can determine what the original reading was.
Great confidence. Now, can the same thing be said going back to the Chicago statement of the Old Testament as well? Because they're older books?
Yes, yes. This would is a statement intended to apply to all of Scripture Autographic text good, uh, inspired and inerrant. Uh, and in the providence of God, the original text can be restored with great accuracy.
Wonderful. So and I think the answer is inherent in what you just said, but I want to underscore it so my friends can make sure they hear you say it. All of what you just said then does not in any way, shape or form undercut the aspect of being inspired and inerrant, then absolutely not.
Um. The Lord Jesus said that he would give the apostles, for example, the ability to perfectly remember everything that he had taught and by implication, everything that he had done. And so the Holy Spirit is superintending that whole process of the writing of Scripture, so that they communicate exactly what the Holy Spirit wants them to communicate. But then fallible human beings, despite their best effort, who are copying scripture over the centuries, sometimes make mistakes, just as you or I would. But in God's gracious providence, through the great antiquity of the ancient manuscripts that he's preserved for 2000 years, which is striking, I would argue it's miraculous. We can restore with great confidence what was originally written. I know that people can be easily confused because they look in their modern translations, and sometimes they'll read a footnote that says, but other manuscripts say this, and other manuscripts say that and they may scratch their heads and wonder, okay, how can we ever know? Um, well, you can know because there are reverent and faithful scholars who have devoted their entire life to doing this difficult work of researching the ancient manuscripts, comparing the readings, and then using, uh, a reliable scientific method to recover the original text.
Wow.
One of the reasons.
I absolutely that.
Discussion is so important. Um, I mentioned earlier Kurt Eichenwald's article. He had a section titled Playing Telephone with the Word of God, and he compared the copying of Scripture throughout the centuries to the telephone game, sometimes called the gossip game, where a person whispers something in someone else's ear. They're listening to it. Then they're supposed to repeat it in the ear of the next person, and it's passed down the line, and you get to the end of the line. 20 people later and they're asked to report what they hear. And it's ridiculously different from the story at the very beginning. And Eichenwald would like for us to think that's how the hand-copying of Scripture was. But that's a terrible analogy. It's a very misleading comparison for several reasons. One is when you play the telephone game and somebody whispers that message in your ear, you have one shot at hearing it and then accurately repeating it. And if you don't hear it correctly, you're not allowed to say, I didn't quite get that. Can you repeat it, please? Well, Hand-copying scripture was not like that. They had the copy that they were reproducing before their very eyes. And if they were writing a letter, a word or a line and thought, I'm not so sure that I remember that correctly, all they had to do was glance back over at the page and what they were copying from, and there was the text right before them. Another thing that makes the comparison invalid is in the telephone game. There are often many distractions. People are talking loudly so that you can't hear what's whispered in your ear. But the copyist of the New Testament didn't labor under those kinds of distractions. And then the third thing is in the telephone game, there's almost always a clown or two who intentionally messes up the message so that they can get a few laughs at the end of the game. But the scribes who copied scripture weren't clowns seeking to get laughs. last. They were in general reverent, believing men and women of God who recognized that they were copying the Holy Scriptures, and they wanted to do it with the highest level of accuracy.
Well, it's so very important. So let me I want to thank you so much, because you took me exactly where I'd hoped we'd go. And I was thinking about the telephone game. And I also remember that as. And this will date me and I'll just put it out there the Saturday Evening Post cover painting by Norman Rockwell. And it really illustrated that idea of the telephone game so beautifully. But here's what I hear often from the skeptics and the cynics. And that is, well, it was oral tradition. I mean, people weren't even writing these things down. Ignorant Bedouins. And there's going to be obviously memory fail, and they're going to be all kinds of things that are going to contradict because it's just through this oral tradition. Naturally, you're going to have problems with the translation. So let me just start at the beginning of that mythology, because that's what it is, you know? It was interesting because even people watching, um, Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments when he's arguing with Yul Brynner and when Yul Brynner wants to make a point as an Egyptian, as a pharaoh, he says, let it be written, let it be done. And I remember the last time I saw that film thinking, do you understand that the Egyptians were writing things down? Hieroglyphics were a form of writing. They were in co existence, if you will, on the human timeline with Moses. So if the Egyptians were writing it down, what's to say that the Jews weren't writing it down at the same time? So walk me through some of that.
Right. Well, if we go back to the disciples of the Lord Jesus, the disciples of the rabbis in the first century frequently took notes of the teachings of the rabbinic master. And when they would hear the master teach, they would often repeat his words verbatim after him so that they could commit them to memory and then pass them down faithfully to future generations. And so from the moment the Lord Jesus utters his teaching, they're recognized as something that must be preserved and transmitted to future generations with the utmost accuracy. So I expect memorization. I expect note taking. Even in that early phase. But there's a huge problem with the idea that the teaching of the New Testament went through this lengthy period of oral transmission. Um, the fact is that the New Testament was penned by the apostles of the Lord Jesus and their associates, eyewitnesses who within a single generation are writing in the New Testament the things that they observed, the things that they heard and the things they remembered with the enabling of the Holy Spirit.
Wow. Absolutely fascinating. So many questions. When we come back, I have multiple questions. I want you to. If you'd be so kind, Chuck, to tell me the difference between text and canon. And then I think it would be important for our listeners, for you to explain why some books are included and deemed to be a part of the canon, and others are not, and how we know appropriately which one should have been included in the 66 books and the ones that should not have. Absolutely fascinating conversation. There is a ton more information in the two books on my information page. Check it out! In the market with Janet Parshall. Click on the red box. It says Program Details and Audio. It will take you to the information page. More with doctor quarrels right after this. Doctor Charles Quarrels is with us. He serves as research professor of New Testament and Biblical theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And again, among the many books he's written. He's also the author of Matthew in the Evangelical Biblical Theological Commentary series, which underscores something that he said at the beginning of our conversation, and that's his real passion for the gospels of Jesus Christ. So I think that takes us appropriately to this idea of the distinction. First, if I can, Chuck, what is the difference between text and canon?
When we talk about the text of the New Testament, we're talking about the wording of the individual books. But when we talk about the canon, it's a question of what books belong in the New Testament. So should the New Testament include Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Should we subtract some of those? Should we add other gospels instead, like the Gospel of Thomas? So text is the wording of the New Testament canon. The books of the New Testament.
Excellent answer. Thank you for that. Okay, so let's talk about the Apocrypha. What is it and why are they not included in the 66 books? Works.
Well. The apocryphal books are books that were written between the time of the Old and New Testament generally that have some interesting material, but were recognised by the church to not have been written by prophets under the inspiration of the spirit, because they contained various errors, and some of them are really important errors. I'll just give the example of the Book of Tobit in the Apocrypha. It actually says that almsgiving quote atones for sin. If you give money to the poor, then it atones for your sin, and you can be made right with God through that act of generosity. We know very clearly from the Christian scriptures that we're saved by grace through faith, not by works including almsgiving. Uh. There are also references to prayers for the dead in the Book of Tobit. Uh, there's a text that talks about casting out a demon by taking a fish carcass and throwing it on the coals, and the odor that's emitted from the burning fish is so atrocious, it drives the demon away. And fantastic things like that, uh, that are of a very different nature than what we find recorded in the inspired scriptures.
Wow. And not only I mean, they're kind of interesting, to say the least, but more importantly, and far more significantly, they would stand in stark opposition to what we deem to be the inspired books of the Bible. Correct? And that is not a that's not a minor. That's a major contradiction.
Right? And God does not contradict himself.
Exactly, exactly. So that's important. Um, you especially someone who loves the New Testaments. Um, I remember studying with great interest the Jesus Seminar, where quite literally. And remember, these are supposed to be learned individuals. Note the air quotes who decided by throwing colored stones what books were inspired, what Jesus said, what he didn't, and based on the different colors of the stone that was going to be indicative of whether or not the words were really words that Jesus spoke and whether or not the Scripture was truly inspired. Kind of a paganistic ritual, paradoxically, to determine what in fact is canonical. So, um, the while that's sort of fallen off the pages of the front page of the newspapers that we read, if we're interested in theology, that ideology still exists, where in fact I push against the idea, the quote, red letter versions of the Scripture. That's a decision made by a printing company that has nothing to do with the Word of God. In fact, you'd have to put the entire Bible in red because all of it is God breathed. And that takes us into the triune nature of God. Talk to me about that.
Right. Well, you're absolutely right. Uh, yes. The Jesus Seminar, uh, Um created mass confusion with many average people on the street because their work was popularized through the media, but it was very confused. I'll just give this example. Um, when they published what they deemed to be the authenticated teachings of Jesus, they titled the book, quote, the Five Gospels, and you might say, well, now hold on. I thought there were four Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, not according to the Jesus Seminar, because they added a fifth gospel called the Gospel of Thomas. But here's the backstory behind the Gospel of Thomas. Number one, we don't know what the Gospel of Thomas even said. I say that because we only have one manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas that is complete. And it's not in the original Greek, it's in Coptic. We have two small Greek fragments of that book, but they both disagree with each other and with the Coptic translation. Uh, in other words, we can't reconstruct this book.
Wow.
Absolutely fascinating. If I may, let me ask you particularly about the book of Matthew. Not only did you write a commentary on this, but you also point out that this is probably the most known of the Gospels, and the oldest. Tell me why.
Well, it's the gospel that is most frequently quoted in the writings of early Christians, uh, in the Apostolic Fathers like Polycarp, uh, and the fathers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus from the second century and on. Uh, it was the primary gospel of the early church.
Now.
There's so many more questions that I could ask you. Chuck, let me suffice it to say that I want my friends to read the books, because you can hear with great clarity how Doctor Quarles answers those questions. So while he is a professor, he doesn't necessarily have to write in a professorial style. He writes it in a way that you and I can get these questions answered. So I particularly think you need to start with the 40 questions that deal with the text and the canon of the New Testament. But then, now that you've gotten the work in definition of textual criticism, it doesn't mean that it's negative. It's a critique. It's an overview. It's a study. It's called the New Testament Textual Criticism for the 21st century, a practical. There's the operative word guide. Both of these would be superb additions to your quiet time in the word, and will help you then better contend for the faith when you get out there in the marketplace of ideas, but also when the enemy creeps in and gives that old lie that he uttered in the beginning of the books. Did God really say, you can say without a doubt, yes, he really did. His word is reliable. Chuck, thank you for a fabulous conversation. Thank you friends. We'll see you next time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.
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