We're going to continue this morning with our study of the fuel-to-fuel transmission and energy transmission canonization. Now the books are available. Collectively, we've talked about the Old Testament canonization last time. We're going to move on in this morning to New Testament canonization. Inspiration that we have been. Applying and and accepting in our study one scripture self-attesting claiming to be the Word of God to the Holy Spirit is the divine agent of inspired scripture. And three, verbal inspiration has been the testimony of Orthodox Christianity throughout church history. And four, the inspiration of scripture is essential as the revelation of God's way of salvation. And then connected with that, we talk about transmission, the way in which the inspired scriptures have come to us and been providentially kept for us. Again, four propositions. One, the doctrine of the nature and being of God necessitates self-revelation from God. to the agency of the Holy Spirit employed various means accommodating human communication. Three, the infallible communication and inerrant transmission of inspired scripture is essential to the trustworthiness of God's communication to humans. And four, although using human instrumentality, the Holy Scriptures are God's special revelation. And then we looked at expositions of 2 Timothy 3, 15 through 17 and 2 Peter 1, 16 through 21. Again, those notes, and I would encourage you to go back and I know that there's a lot of material that we're giving through this study. Some of it is survey and it's a lot at one time, but I hope these notes will be beneficial that you can go back and think through and spend time chewing on this material. Now, a crucial test of the doctrine of inspiration and transmission, a crucial test is canonization. which is not ultimately dependent on the testimony of church creeds, councils or declarations in validating Holy Scripture. But the visible church can attest to divine truth and providence in differentiating the word of God from the word of men, even the subscriptural and the false scriptural claims of men. We talked a little bit about that and saw some examples of that, particularly in dealing with the Old Testament canonization. So the rule or measure, which that's what the word canon means, the rule or measure for scriptural or for scripture identity is scriptural warrant. What we mean by that is that scripture identifies itself by claiming to be the word of God and is distinguishable from the subscriptural and the false scriptural writings. The doctrine of the incarnation and Jesus self-attestation to be the Christ is a good example of this. Why do we accept Jesus as the Christ? Is it by the testimony of the church, by the creeds and the councils of the church that hammered out and dealt with the doctrine of Christology? No, not in the first place. In the first place, we accept Jesus as the Christ because of his self-attestation. He said that he was. And the doctrine of the incarnation is essential to our understanding God's way of salvation, God's self-revelation of himself. And so we could apply that to the doctrine of scripture as well. Except I would be careful to make this caveat, and that is our salvation is not in the scriptures. Our salvation is in Christ, but the scriptures are necessary to reveal Christ to us. Christian believers should hold to a prima facie acceptance of the self-attesting and consistent scriptural revelation of God centered in the person work of Jesus Christ, validated by the Holy Spirit and recognized throughout history by the confessing covenantal church. And so here are four questions that are helpful for us to use as we approach and mull over this matter of scripture. Does this writing claim to be the word of God? As we deal with canonization and what is in the canon of scripture and what is excluded and the reasons why. So does this writing claim to be the word of God? Does this writing comport with a unified message fulfilled in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Again, all Orthodox doctrines find their vertex, their ultimate point of contact in the incarnation. You can just think about any of them, the Trinity, creation, sin and redemption, atonement and justification, salvation and judgment. All of them find their ultimate point of contact in the doctrine of the incarnation. Does this writing have the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth who glorifies Christ? And we'll hear Jesus say that this morning as it relates to the New Testament canon of scripture. And then four, does this writing have a record of acceptance in the confessing covenantal church? We're not throwing out the witness of the church. We're just simply saying that it's not the church that determines scripture. The church may recognize it. Yes, sir. On the surface, just on the very surface that we as Christian believers have the intuitive witness of the Holy Spirit and from the very surface reading of the scriptures. Let's see. All right. We're going to look this morning at the continuity between the Old Testament canonization and the New Testament canonization. There's a lot of similarity there. There are differences that we will get to. But let's start out with what continuity exists between the Old Testament canonization and the New Testament. The divinely inspired and providentially collected New Testament scriptures. And let me also say that I have put a number of quotations from various sources and materials that I've been using, and you can see the notes and can see those are credited to whom they belong. But the reason for doing that is that this is not just my ideas. I brought up the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. It told you about some of the people that adhered to that statement. And my reason for doing so is that these are not just my ideas. I'm trying to show you this is a consistent and faithful testimony of those who believe the Christian faith and the gospel, the person of Christ, and the Reformed doctrine, although all of the people I quote are not necessarily committed to Reformed doctrine. But I hope that you'll see that by this broad witness that this is not something that's just my own private ideas or notions. Yes, sir. No, not always. It varies with the concept of, for instance, how does God communicate? A couple of weeks ago, it was brought out that the Koran was based on oral tradition, whereas one of the distinctions that we made is a written record and that oral tradition is insufficient. So it's not, while yes, there are people who claim that their sacred writings have a unique and distinct place, that doesn't mean that it is equal to the same idea that we are expressing regarding inspiration and transmission. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Yeah, that opposition against the Bible is intense and because the claims of the Bible are self-evident and the implications of the claims of the Bible are also something that don't escape the human conscience. Actually, I'm going to be talking about that a little bit more this morning in our exposition of Psalm 139. Why is there such opposition to the Bible? Because of the self-evident claims that it makes and the implications that come upon the human conscience regarding that. A few years ago, I was having just a private conversation with someone who was struggling with these things, and struggling with the concept of who God was, and I was emphasizing the importance and the necessity of revelation, that we're not safe to make up from our own imagination who God is. And, of course, this person said to me, how do you live with those implications? And the answer to that is, you don't. You die. And unless we die to ourself and are born again, then we don't see life. So the implications are very evident. Yes, sir. I think it varies. I think it varies to some extent. Remember the illustration? I know it's kind of a silly illustration, but I don't get tired of using it, of trying to hold a beach ball under the water. That is that constant pressure of God-consciousness that, yes, at a subconscious level cannot be eradicated. It may be suppressed. It may be kept down by busyness, by distraction, by self-deception, just to name a few things, but it's there. And Paul even talks about sometimes the carterization in terms of the doctrine of reprobation, which is a deep and mysterious doctrine. But there is a time when even the conscience is seared and scaled over, as it were, with scarring from the depths of sin. But he does not in any way suggest that that removes accountability or consciousness of guilt. But there is a deep mystery regarding even reprobation. Well, let's look then on at the New Testament canonization as we move into that and look at continuity between that and the Old Testament canonization. What evidently happened in the early centuries of Christianity was this. Christ passed on to his followers as Holy Scripture, the Bible which he had received, containing the same books as the Hebrew Bible today. The first Christian shared with their Jewish contemporaries a full knowledge of the identity of the canonical books. However, the Bible was not yet between two covers. It was a memorized list of scrolls. The breach with Jewish oral tradition, in some matters a very necessary breach, the alienation between Jew and Christian, and the general ignorance of Semitic languages in the church outside Palestine and Syria led to increasing doubt concerning the canon among Christians, which was accentuated by the drawing up of a new list of biblical books arranged on other principles and the introduction of new lectionaries. Such doubt about the canon could only be resolved and can only be resolved today the way it was resolved at the Reformation. by returning to the teaching of the New Testament and the Jewish background against which it was to be understood. And that comes from Dr. Beckwith, who I mentioned to you, his studies regarding the Old Testament canon. And I think he sets it in a good place for us to see that this concept regarding God's communication and written communication regarding the prophets, the continuity of that process was accepted and was passed on to the early and first Christians, and they received, of course, the Old Testament canon as their first Bible. But as he pointed out, with the growth of the church, particularly in non-Semitic and non-Hebrew speaking areas, the Greek translation, the Septuagint, became the Bible of the church. And we talked last week a little bit about that and the importance of the Septuagint and why the Septuagint was targeted to some extent. The basis of our view of inspiration and therefore canonicity is the authority of Christ. Here again is a quotation from Dr. Harris, who I'm deeply indebted to. I've mentioned to you his book before, Inspiration and Canonicity of the Holy Scriptures. Tremendous study, but one that's warm and founded in vibrant belief in Christ. And so this is what he has to say. The basis of our view of inspiration, and therefore canonicity, is the authority of Christ. We have abundant admitted historical testimony to the person and authority of Christ in the major Pauline epistles to name only this one source. Believing in this supernatural Christ, we receive the assurance of salvation given by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. And this gets back to some of the prima facie that I was talking about earlier on in the intuitive witness of the Holy Spirit, which is a regenerated witness. It doesn't come natural. It's supernatural. This inward testimony of the Holy Spirit to our salvation, as we read in Romans 8, 16, and in 1 John 3, 24, assures us of the adequacy of our full belief in Christ. On this basis, we trust Christ's words in further areas, his commands, his promises, and his certification of the words of the Old Testament prophets and his chosen apostles. These apostles themselves claim the authority and power which Christ promised them. And that was one of the things we were talking about in reference to the self-attesting nature of Scripture, that it claims to be the Word of God. Did this writing claim to be the product of a prophet or an apostle? Does it claim to be the Word of God? There are some who did. But by the tests of those various other points that we gave regarding the person of Christ and his work and such things proved not to be consistent or proved not to be faithful. And so they were false. There were false apostles or there are false writings. And that, of course, causes us some heartburn, and we are disturbed about that. We even found that to be the case with some of the Old Testament scriptures. Not the Old Testament scriptures, but those that claimed extra-biblical books that claimed to be of the Bible. Or maybe didn't claim, but were assumed to be. So when we talked about the Apographa and the Pseudepigrapha last time. Here we have a couple of citations from the Gospel of John. In chapter 14 and chapter 16, here is a self attestation from Jesus. Here we have Jesus saying something about scripture to come. Here we have Jesus saying something about scriptures to come in terms of the agency of the Holy Spirit as recorded in a gospel account of the written word of God. Jesus said to his apostles, these things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all things that I said to you. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot hear them now. However, when he the spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth or he will not speak on his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me or he will take up what is mine and declare it to you. And so I would simply say, remember the post-resurrection ministry of Jesus, how intense and powerful that was. Remember that even the apostles will say from time to time, we didn't understand this at the time, but after his resurrection, we understood it. John, even at the end of his writing, says that if all the things that Jesus did and said were written in the book, he says, I don't think the world could hold the books that would be written concerning the depth and the power and the magnitude and the wonder of the things that Jesus said and did. So by no means are we saying that the Bible is exhaustive of all that Jesus said and did. We've said before the Bible cannot comprehend the full nature and the being of God. It's revelatory of what is necessary and good and even beyond our comprehension. But it is not able to comprehend or to contain all that God is. So neither would we say that is the case regarding Jesus and even his days of humiliation and his during the time of his incarnation. But what he tells us here is that we are to expect that in his post-resurrection ministry, the work of the Holy Spirit is essential as the agent of divine revelation, that his apostles would receive fuller and better understanding, and they would be guided into all truth and revealing things that would be coming for his people to follow. And I believe he's speaking directly regarding the New Testament scripture. From this, we can derive, in turn, the basic principle of canonicity for the New Testament. It is identical to that of the Old Testament, since it narrows down to a matter of divine inspiration. Whether we think of the Old Testament times or the apostles and their God-given associates of the New, for instance, Mark and Luke were not apostles, but they were deputies of the apostles and under the direction of apostles, even in their writing. So whether we think of the Old Testament times or the apostles and their God-given associates of the New, The recognition at the very time of their writing that they were authentic spokesmen for God is what determines the intrinsic canonicity of their writing. It is altogether God's Word only if it is God-breathed. We can be assured that the books under question were received by the Church of the Apostolic Age precisely when they had been certified by an apostle as being thus inspired. The apparent variation relative to geographic area and acknowledgement of some of the New Testament epistles may well reflect the simple fact that this attestation was by its very nature localized at the first. Conversely, that all 27 books of the now universally received New Testament were ultimately agreed upon is evidence that proper attestation was indeed confirmed after rigorous investigation. That comes from Milton Fisher, his article in The Origin of the Bible by Philip Comfort. His article is The Canon of the New Testament. And one of the things that we'll find as we look a little bit this morning, but even more so next week, is that it was localized. And there were writings that were received within local churches, and then they began to be circulated. And that circulation, they didn't have UPS as we have today, and so that circulation took more time. And there were some areas where some of the books of the New Testament were longer in being received because it took them longer to get there. Or also a few instances where like in the with Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament or Hebrews in the New Testament, there was a question about authorship simply because it was not identified, not because it didn't claim to be inspired, but it was not tied to a specific individual prophet or apostle. And over time that was sorted out. So we have a pattern, if you will, of a localized beginning and then irradiating out of that localized beginning of the spread of the New Testament writings. And you might be surprised as we go on that the first New Testament documents to be written, we think chronologically, and we think, of course, in the arrangement of our New Testament, that the Gospels would have been written first. But from what we find by investigation and historical study is that first, the New Testament documents to be written were the earlier epistles of Paul. These, together possibly with the Epistle of James, were written between A.D. 48 and 60. So, within the first century, we're talking about within the first century of the Christian Church, the canonization of Scripture is complete. Very distinct from what took place in the Old Testament. But nonetheless, there was a successive and continuing witness of prophets over, you know, many hundreds of years. until we came to the close of the Old Testament canon. And now with the beginning of the New Testament canon, what we find is that within 100 years, the canon is complete. So these earlier writings of Paul and possibly James were written between 80, 48, and 60, before even the earliest of the Gospels was written. Paul's letters were preserved at first by the communities or individuals to whom they were sent. By the end of the first century, there is evidence to suggest that his surviving correspondence began to be collected into a Pauline corpus, which quickly circulated among the churches. First, a shorter corpus of 10 letters, and soon afterwards, a longer one of 13, enlarged by the inclusion of the three pastoral epistles. Within the Pauline Corpus, the letters appear to have been arranged not in chronological order, but in descending order of length. This principle may still be recognized in the order found in most editions of the New Testament today. The letters to the churches come before the letters to individuals. And within these two subdivisions, they are arranged so that the longest comes first and then the shortest last. And the only departure from this scheme is that Galatian comes before Ephesians, although Ephesians is slightly a bit longer than Galatians. With the gospel collection and the Pauline corpus, And Acts, you know that Acts was written by Luke as a second part of his writing. But Luke was an associate of the Apostle Paul's. And one of the things that we delight in recognizing is that Luke had access to first account witnesses. I mean, I think that Luke interviewed Mary as an example. So with the gospel collection, the Pauline corpus and Acts to serve as a link between the two, we have the beginning of the New Testament canon as we know it. The early church, which inherited the Hebrew Bible, the Greek version known as the Septuagint, as its sacred scriptures, was not long in setting the new evangelical and apostolic writings alongside the Law and the Prophets, and in using them for the propagation and defense of the gospel and in Christian worship. And we saw last week where the Septuagint became a source of contention between Christian and Jew early on. And so we have these writings that are connected in that development of the New Testament canon from the Apostle Paul initially and then on to the other apostles and the deputies of the apostles being collected within the first century and recognized as such. Well, as it was used by the Christians, as it was used and quoted by the Christians, of course, it was a it was a faithful translation from Hebrew into Greek. And the Christians, knowing and Greek being the more common language, were using it. It was, of course, validated by the leaders of Christianity and their use of the Septuagint, Jesus' use of it as well. And obviously, because of the witness of the prophets to the coming Messiah, Because of Jesus' claim to be that Messiah, the Septuagint was essential in their use and their defense of Jesus as the Christ. And that was one of the sources of contention between Jew and Christian that developed early on. Yeah, the Septuagint, of course, as we pointed out, was translated, you know, two to three hundred years before the time of Christ. And it was for that very reason, because Hebrew was being lost as a language. And we pointed out that Greek was the lingua franca of that era. And so it was translated into Greek. We're going to talk more about that when we talk about translation. that here is a bona fide translation that we can accept, and even when we use our English translations and say this is the word of God, we're going to talk about translation philosophy and some things like that, and the Septuagint is an important part of that. Yes, ma'am. Well, it varies with what Jewish groups and historically among Jews, what you find happening was this contest with early Christians, the rejection of Christian belief in Christ as the Messiah, and they early on turned to mysticism. And so you have coming in the place of scripture, the Mishnah and the Talmuds, which are commentary and tradition, and then a corpus of that that continues to develop. And then we even pointed out in previous studies that there were additional translations by Aquila and Symmachus that were attempts to change the Septuagint in particular passages relative to the prophecies of Christ. And again, it varies. I mentioned, I think it was last week, that there's a noted Talmudic historian and scholar and theologian, I think of the 12th century off the top of my head, Moses Memonides. And there's a passage from Isaiah that he exegetes. I was telling the folks last week that just brings tears to my eyes because he exegetes regarding the Messiah. And it's a beautiful passage and it's beautifully exegeted, but it's over a thousand years after Christ. So he rejected and missed the fulfillment in the person of Jesus of what he recognized by hope and expectation in the prophet Isaiah. So it varies from which. And of course we know that there was divergence even in theological terms. We speak of liberal and conservative even in reference to Jewish history and theology. Yes sir. Yes, I think that came later on. qualify this will get more closely next week. But early on, James was received. It was later over disputes and theological disputes that there was questioning of it. But as I understand it, James was early received and recognized to be part of the New Testament canon. All right. Let's look further than the principle determining recognition of the authority of the canonical New Testament writings. was established within the context of these writings themselves. There are repeated exhortations for the public reading of the apostolic communications. At the close of his first letter to the Thessalonians, possibly the first book of the New Testament to be written, Paul says, I command you in the name of the Lord to read this letter to all the Christians. Earlier in the same letter, Paul commends their ready acceptance of his spoken word as the word of God. Chapter two, verse thirteen and in first Corinthians fourteen thirty seven. He speaks similarly of his writings, insisting that his message be recognized as a commandment from the Lord himself. We have other references to Colossians four sixteen to Revelation one three. Also, in 2 Peter 3, verses 15 through 16, Paul's letters are included with the other scriptures, which I think is very important. You know, Peter talks about our brother Paul has written many things, some of which are hard to understand, but that's in connection with what is received and accepted as scripture. And of course, that also means, as we've looked at the Old Testament canon. Since Peter's is a general letter, Widespread knowledge of Paul's letter is thereby implied. Highly indicative also is Paul's usage in 1 Timothy 5 18. He follows up the formula. The scripture says by a combined quotation about not muzzling an ox from Deuteronomy 25 and the worker deserves his wages from Luke chapter 10. Thus, an equivalence is implied between Old Testament scripture and New Testament gospel. So we look at those kinds of connections and claims as we talked about those various standards by which we evaluate the claim for canonicity. We see that 1 Corinthians 2.13 is a clear declaration that the Apostle Paul was giving the very words of God. He claims that just as a man must reveal his own thoughts to another, so the thoughts of God cannot be discovered by human reason, but are matters of revelation. He claims that this revelation is by the Spirit of God and that he, Paul, having been taught by the Holy Spirit, has given the Corinthian Christians this revelation. The verse is particularly significant because it claims that the very words have been given by the Holy Spirit. Also, I might mention to you one of the Apostle Paul's claims and defenses of his apostleship, because he was not one of the original twelve, but he refers to himself as an apostle born out of season. And one of the necessary requirements for an apostle was that they be taught by Christ and that they be witness of his baptism and his resurrection. And the claim that Paul makes is that Christ came to him individually and personally. appeared to him, and that for three years, Paul, back out in the wilderness, was instructed and taught by Christ. And so that he defends his apostleship, and one of the important things and byproducts of his defense of his apostleship is the defense of canonicity of Scripture. And that, of course, goes for all of the apostles, as they were under Christ's command, as we saw back in the Gospel of John, and that the promise of the Holy Spirit as the agent of inspiration and revelation for scripture and then in the apostles and primature within that first generation of what was accepted and therefore the New Testament canon. That's one of the reasons that we reject a continuing revelation. There are no more apostles. The apostles are in heaven. The church isn't losing anything. The church doesn't need more scripture. We've got more than we can deal with. We've got more than we can know. So we don't need more scripture. We need to obey and be true to what scripture we have. The book of Galatians is known as a book in which Paul spoke sharply to one of his churches that was in danger of going astray. Uh, the introduction is almost Kurt in verse one, Paul, an apostle sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God, the father who raised him from the dead. He insists in verses eight and nine that the gospel, which he has preached is directly from heaven so much so that it cannot be contradicted even by an angel. He declares in verses 11 and 12 that the gospel which he had preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it. Rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. He does not deny the leadership of the other apostles, James, Peter and John, but actually puts himself on a par with them as receiving revelations from God and giving the gospel in a God appointed ministry. So in that state of excitement and agitation in dealing with the Galatians, Paul writes, defending his apostleship and the authority of the Word of God that was committed to him against error and what he was contending with. Also, in Corinthians, remember when Paul gives instructions regarding decorum within the church and worship, particularly relating to the Lord's Supper, what does he tell us? That he received directly from Jesus instructions regarding the Lord's Supper. And he goes on to say he received these words and is passing them on. And I've told you many times how I take delight in observing the Lord's Supper and administering the Lord's Supper because I recount the very words of Jesus. I believe those words are given to us verbatim. not only the Gospels, but also through the Apostle Paul and then through his faithful ministers who continue to pronounce his words of institution as the verbatim words of Christ preserved and kept for us and continued within the church. It is thus obvious that a test for inspiration is ready to hand in the New Testament age. The teaching of an apostle was received and was intended to be received simply because he was an apostle commissioned by Christ. As in the case of the Old Testament prophet, what he wrote was naturally as authoritative as what he spoke. And therefore, any production of an apostle like that of an Old Testament prophet would at once be accepted as divine. It is this which the Apostles, in their writings, commanded and expected. It is this which Jesus commissioned to them would imply. This view would fully explain the sudden rise of the New Testament as an authoritative corpus of undoubted authority. As mentioned above, it was not a selection, but was a production. Undoubted letters and writings of the Apostles were received, as far as we can tell at once, Others were added to these books as it became known that they were in the same category of authorship. The New Testament canon at Corinth at first consisted of two epistles, Paul's two letters to the Corinthians. At Colossae it consisted of one epistle, Paul's letter to the Colossians. And very soon, the canon at Colossae grew in response to Paul's injunction of Colossians 416, that the Laodicean letter, and there's reason to think that this is our letter to the Ephesians, that the Laodicean letter also be read so that the canon would then include two epistles, Colossians and Ephesians and vice versa. Very soon, by an exchange with the other Pauline churches, the canon included all of the Pauline epistles and the Gospels as they were written and circulated. How long it took for all the inspired books to be circulated and established in any one church is difficult to say. By 30 years after the death of John, virtually all of them were known and used in all the centers from which our evidence comes. Certain of the smaller books were still in some quarters questioned as to their authorship and therefore as to their authority for perhaps another 50 years. So once again, we're talking about within the first century or just, you know, a little bit after, as it were, that there is a known, recognized, and completed canon of the New Testament. As a matter of fact, some of the scholars who have questions and to dispute about the doctrine of inspiration don't dispute about the canon of the New Testament in terms of what books received within that approximately first century. Mm hmm. Well, I think it affected the church, I mean, because of Onesimus and Paul's instruction to Philemon about his treatment of Onesimus, both as a legal Roman, but also as a Christian brother. And then I would say ultimately, it's because of apostolic and primature. It was written by Paul. And there's dispute about, do we have a third letter to the Corinthians? There's a dispute about that, whether that was really, is there really a third letter or is second Corinthians actually the letter that Paul was referring to? It's just unclear. And then this final note, kind of a summary note from Dr. Warfield and his inspiration and authority of the Bible, I think kind of puts together what we had said about localization and the reception and acceptance of the testimony and validation of apostolic writing and witness, even to apostolic deputies like Luke and Mark. What he points out is that the process was not a process regarding canonization. It was a process of circulation. So the question was not that the churches in further outlying areas were not receiving the canon as such. It was not a matter of whether they were treating or accepting or evaluating. It had more to do with circulation. They just hadn't had all of the letters or all of the writing circulated to them. And this is what Dr. Warfield says. The early churches in short received as we receive into their New Testament all the books historically evidence to them as given by the apostles to the churches as their code of law. And we must not mistake the historical evidences of the so slow circulation and authentication of these books over the widely extended church for evidence of slowness of canonization of books by the authority or taste of the church itself. So once again, he's underscoring that it's not by church authority, but rather the canonization is self-evident in the claims of the apostles and recognized within that first century, identified with them, and then it was the circulation process that took a bit more time as it radiated out from that local center. Well, that has to do with the continuity between the New Testament canonization and the Old Testament canonization, prophets and apostles, the early recognition and defining of the canon of what we know as the New Testament. But we have some challenges before us as we look next week into New Testament canonization in the early church as we begin to look at extra-biblical records of the early Christian witnesses and also, interestingly enough, witnesses of the heretics and the conflicts that were going on over Christian doctrine and the appeal to Scripture. and the canonization of Scripture in even dealing with bonafide or heretical doctrines of Scripture. Again, we'll only be able to give a survey, but I think it's some information that you'll find helpful and I think you'll be interested in it. We've heard recently of such things as the Gnostic Gospels. For instance, you've probably heard before of the Gospel of Thomas, the Gnostic Gospel, and then recently there was a claim that a new fragment had been found of the Gospel of Judas. And you may be disturbed or not have your faith tested, but you may wonder, where do these writings come from and how do we know they're not part of the Bible? Well, we're going to talk about that next week, about the Gnostic Gospels, similar to Apographa and Pseudepigrapha writings that we talked about in reference to the Old Testament canon. You may be interested too that this won't be next week, this will be the following week. Next week I plan to finish up with transmission and then the following week we'll begin on translation. I hesitate to say how many lessons we'll have on translation. I'll try to make it few. But we're interested in translation. That's probably where more questions come in reference to what are the differences in translation. And they relate to two major issues. One, manuscripts that are used, and two, philosophy of translation. And I think we need to know about that. We need to have some guidance and some information relative to that question. Yes, sir? Is there sort of a link between what's happening with translation now back to how available Well, actually, I've been somewhat encouraged by some of the developments in translation. It depends on what group and what philosophy of translation is being followed. Among conservative Bible-believing scholars, it's been a return more to the historical grammatical approach and philosophy of translation, as opposed to what was current for a while, dynamic equivalence, which I have real problems with. And these things are kind of interconnected when it comes to manuscripts used and translation philosophy that's followed. And we have to begin to try to, like fishing line that's got tangled, we have to begin to try to take it apart a little bit at a time. So I hope to give you some guidance about that. As it relates to the various languages, Tower of Babel, I'm not quite sure your point is Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that was pointed out to me years ago, I don't even know who pointed it out. I think I heard it in a sermon or lecture or something, but it really stuck with me, is that Pentecost was the undoing of the power of Babel. And how was it undoing it? With the message of the gospel. And that was the unit. That's the unifying. It's not the unification of of human culture or human languages or so forth. It's the unification of the message of the gospel, the good news that goes to every kindred tongue, tribe and people. And that's what I keep praying that God would continue to make this a house of prayer for all people, every kindred tongue, tribe and people to hear the gospel of Christ. So the Pentecost is our great model. And one of the reasons why we do translate scripture, a great heritage of scriptural translation as a bona fide word of the evangel of getting the gospel out. So. Yes, sir. Yeah, so yeah, that's a vital work. That's a part of the ministry of the church, the work of translation and circulating the Word of God, the confidence that we have that even in translation, we're preserving the Word of God that is owned and used by the Holy Spirit. So any other questions this morning? Anything? Again, I know that we're covering a lot of ground and giving you a lot of material, but Hopefully you can go back and chew on it some. All right. Thank you for your patience and time this morning. We're dismissed.