Well, thank you, David. Good evening, everyone. Hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for coming out on a rainy night here to look at a very important topic. I love being in Columbia. Thanks for not booing when you learned I went to UNC Chapel Hill. I told David not to say anything about that. Keep it quiet. He let the cat out of the bag, but it is great to be down here and I trust The topic tonight is one that is of interest to you, and it's the topic, as David mentioned, about whether we can trust the way the Bible was put together. Now, that topic was not arbitrarily chosen. It actually is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and one that I've devoted a good bit of time and research and energy to, and I love going to campus groups like this one and talking to college students about it. Because I think this is one of the most common things that are on people's minds. And so the goal tonight is to have a conversation about that. I'm going to lay out for you a number of things for you to think about and consider tonight about the origins of the Bible and how we got it and where it came from. And then we'll have a Q&A time. A chance for you just to fire off your questions. It can be about what I talk about tonight or anything else related to biblical authority or where the scripture came from. So I'm looking forward to tonight. It should be a fun time together, and I hope you are as well. Now, the topic before us is big. And, you know, when someone says, how is the Bible put together? I realize there's many, many books have been written on that subject, and we could talk for hours and hours on that subject. I want to narrow down that question tonight with a very specific question, which is about the origins of the New Testament and how it was put together. And in particular, beyond that, I actually want to talk about misconceptions about how the New Testament was put together. And I find that there's all kinds of ideas out there about how our New Testament was formed and where it came from and how it was sort of picked, if you will, and misconceptions abound. And so I'm going to lay out five of those tonight. Five misconceptions about the origins of the New Testament canon. And just to give you something to think about as you ask, well, maybe I have one of those misconceptions, or maybe my friend does, or maybe I read it on the internet, or what have you. We want to get down to what really took place and what really happened about the New Testament. So that's where we're going tonight. Now, to kick us off, I want to start in a very unusual place. I want to start tonight by first talking about Muhammad Ali for a moment. Now, when I say I want to talk about Muhammad Ali, I know you're thinking to yourself, what in the world? We're talking about the origins of the New Testament, and he wants to talk about the boxer Muhammad Ali. But actually, I don't want to talk about the boxer Muhammad Ali. I actually want to talk about the shepherd Muhammad Ali. In fact, chances are you've never even heard of the shepherd Muhammad Ali, but he actually should be famous for what he discovered. A number of years ago, it was actually 1945, in a little town called Nag Hammadi, Egypt, Muhammad Ali was out one day in his field digging in the ground. And it was like any other ordinary day for a shepherd in 1945 in Egypt. And suddenly his shovel hit something hard. He's thinking to himself, well that's odd. So he digs a little bit more around it and he clears away the dirt and it turns out that he's discovered an old earthenware jar in the middle of the ground. And as he clears away the dirt, he takes his earthenware jar and he realizes the top has been sealed. And he's thinking that maybe inside is the answer to all my prayers and dreams. Maybe if I crack this thing open, I'll have treasure and I'll have gold and silver and jewels and I'll become rich and wealthy and all will be right. So he goes back and forth about where he's going to crack this jar open and his brother who's there says, don't break it open. There might be an evil genie inside who curses us. So they go back and forth, they have a debate, and finally decide, you know what, I'm going to risk the Evil Genie, and I'm going to crack open this jar and see what's inside. So he cracks it open, and after he breaks open this jar, he's profoundly disappointed. Just utterly let down. Why? Because in there is not gold, not silver or jewels, not the answer to his prayers. All that's inside are books. Now at the time, Muhammad Ali didn't even know what he had found, but inside there were 13, what we call, codices. And inside those codices were a bunch of stories. 52 of them, actually. 52 individual tractates inside these 13 books. And if only Muhammad Ali had known what he had discovered that day, because he made what might just be one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the entire modern world. What he found are books about Jesus. Books about Christianity. Books about what it means to be a Christian and to follow God. But what's interesting about these books is they told a very different story about Jesus than the books that you're used to reading. You're used to reading our Gospels and our Bibles called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But if Muhammad Ali had read the books he found, he'd realize it tells a story of a very different Jesus. A Jesus that's not so much divine, but tells you that you're divine. It's a Jesus that hasn't come really to save you from your sins, but he's really a Jesus that says you don't need to be saved from your sins, you just need to have higher enlightenment and knowledge. He found a Jesus that really didn't die on the cross for anybody, but Jesus that was just a good, wise teacher telling you about how to live. What Muhammad Ali had discovered, and didn't know it, was what later became known as the Gnostic Gospels. In fact, the most famous of the writings he discovered was what came to be known as the Gospel of Thomas. And the Gospel of Thomas, as I just laid out, tells the story of Jesus very different than the Jesus in our Bibles. If only Muhammad Ali had known what he had found, he could have sold it for millions upon millions of dollars. He didn't, sadly. He ended up trading it away to an antiquities dealer and finally found its way into a museum. But that archaeological discovery has since that day raised all kinds of questions, and actually the very questions you have here tonight. It's the very questions we all have, which is, well, hold on a second. What about the books that he found? And why aren't those in our Bibles? And maybe the Gospel of Thomas is just as valid as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And why should I trust the version of Jesus in our Bibles and not the version of Jesus that those people were reading? And for that matter, who picked the books in the Bible anyway? And when were they put together? And why should I trust that? Those are good questions. Those are the kind of questions we want to ask. Because if we can't have a good sense of where our Bibles came from and how they were put together, then we have no reason to trust them. So what he discovered in the sands of Egypt in 1945 actually has spurred all kinds of conversations in both the academic world and among people like you and me as we think about why we believe what we believe. So do we have any reason to think that the Gospel of Thomas is more valid than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Do we have any reason to think that our Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are reliable and trustworthy or that the version of Christianity we believe is true? That's the kind of questions I want to begin to answer tonight. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk through these five misconceptions about the origins of the New Testament, one at a time. And these are the five misconceptions I've chosen because I've heard these the most. And where have I heard these? Well, I've heard these all over the place. I've heard these in group meetings just like this. I've heard these even in the academic world. I've certainly heard them in popular books like the Da Vinci Code and things like this. And certainly on the internet, where it seems like everybody's an expert on the internet, right? And everybody seems to know just about everything there is to know about everything. But what you'll soon discover is what you might think you know about the canon in this development isn't necessarily what happened. Okay, with that in mind, let's walk through five things that I think are misconceptions out there about the way the canon was formed. Let's start with the first one. The first misconception. And again, as I read each of these, remember these are misconceptions. These aren't what I think. This is what I think needs to be corrected. First misconception. The authors of the New Testament did not think they were writing scripture. the authors of the New Testament did not think they were writing scripture. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that idea thrown out there. That idea is popular even in the church, certainly in the academy, and that idea kind of goes along these lines. It says that when the earliest Christians wrote the books, that eventually became part of our New Testaments, they had no idea what they were doing. They were just writing occasional letters. Paul was trying to give some friendly advice to a few churches, and the gospel writers were just trying to simply lay out some facts about Jesus. And they had no idea that their books were authoritative. They had no idea that their books should rule or guide the church. They had no intent that they would do so. They just wrote books because they felt like doing it. And it was only later that the church began to use and read these books. And then as the church began to use and read these books a lot, they grew to really like them. And then after the church really began to like these books, someone said, you know what? We like these books so much, we should call these scripture. It's a great idea. Who agrees? We should call this scripture. So they got these books together they liked the most, and they voted, and those are the books that became scripture, and all the other books didn't. And this is the idea that people have about the way the New Testament canon is formed. Now, that whole narrative that I just laid out to you suggests, then, that there's a big gap between the original intent of the New Testament authors, which is just to write sort of popular-level stuff with no real authority, and then what the later church did with the New Testament. In other words, the later church took books written for an entirely other purpose and then just sort of infused authority into them, sort of made them authoritative, declared their scripture because we liked them more than other books, and now their scripture. But that was never what the authors originally intended them to be. Now, the reason that misconception is spread out, I think, is because there's this idea in our head, for whatever sets of reason, that the reason we have a New Testament canon is because the church decided to have one. In other words, the reason you have a Bible today is because some committee got together somewhere in a church and voted on it or decided to do it. Now, there's some truth in that. It's certainly true that the church had a role in the formation of the New Testament. But I think the reason we don't think the authors wrote with any awareness of their own authority is because we think that's all the New Testament is. It's just a later, after-the-fact idea imposed on books written for another purpose. But is it really true that the authors had no idea what they were doing when they wrote? I want to suggest it isn't. Now, I've written on this extensively in other places, and so under this first misconception, I can't give you the full argument. If you want to get the full argument, one of my books called The Question of Canon has an entire chapter devoted to this. But I want to suggest to you that one of the reasons that we know that the New Testament writers knew what they were doing is because they had a distinctive office that they were fulfilling when they wrote, and that office was the office of apostle. Now, you hear the word apostle thrown around a lot, and maybe you've heard it here and there and not sure what it means. But an apostle, basically, are the hand-picked followers of Jesus. They're the ones that knew Him, they're the ones that followed Him, they're the ones that were His friends, and they're the ones that were commissioned to speak for Jesus. They were the ones who were going to deliver the message of Jesus. They were commissioned to have Jesus' authority when they spoke, so that when they spoke and taught the message of Jesus, it was to be received as if Jesus spoke it. So they were the mouthpiece of God. They were like prophets. Prophets had real authority in the Old Testament, and the apostles had real authority in the New Testament. And when the apostles began to deliver this message of Jesus, and they delivered it with authority, with the sense that it should be heard and followed and listened to, When the apostles began to do that originally, they did it just through oral presentations. They did it through public preaching and speaking. Probably not that different than what we're doing tonight. But here's what's interesting. As time passed, the apostles also took that message from Jesus and they wrote it down. They began to write books with that message in it. In fact, it's those books that make up our New Testament. We don't have time to fully explore this tonight, but we believe that when we look at our New Testament writings, we are reading apostolic books, books penned by or containing the teaching of the apostles, which was the authoritative teachings of the followers of Christ. So that means that when Paul wrote a letter, for example, he didn't think it was just friendly advice. He didn't think it was like a letter or an email that you and I write that's like, here's my musings on such and such. No, Paul thought that when he was writing, he was writing with the very authority of Christ. Put differently, when he spoke, Christ spoke. And he expected his audience to know that. So much so that they treasured his books from the very start as authoritative books. If that's true, then here's what that means. That means that the church didn't have to wait 300 years to start treasuring these books. They didn't have to wait 200 years for someone to say, you know what? I think the book of Romans is so great, we ought to call it scripture. No, it would have had the highest authority it could possibly have from the very start. Now, I don't have time to give you all the examples of this, but I just want to read one. This is a statement from Paul in 1 Corinthians, and he's writing here about his own letter. I want you to listen very closely to the way Paul conceives of what he's doing. Here's what he says. If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which are right to you are the Lord's commandment. But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. Did you catch what he said there? He's basically saying, I want you to know that the very things I'm writing to you, you Corinthians, in this letter, these are the Lord's commandment to you. And if you don't recognize, and I'm a spokesman for Christ, if you don't recognize the things that I'm writing to you are God's commandment to you, then you're not to be recognized. In other words, Paul is saying, if you're rejecting the mouthpiece of Christ, then you are in a sense to be rejected. And what you realize here is that Paul didn't think he was just writing occasional friendly advice. Paul thought he was writing books that were to govern and to be authoritative in the life of the church. And we have a name for that. It's called scripture. In fact, what we realized later is that people began to call Paul's books scripture. In fact, Peter and the New Testament itself calls Paul's letters scripture later on in one of his letters. Okay, so what's the upshot of this first point? This first point is very simple. Don't think the New Testament's formation is some later 4th century idea. It is something built in, if you will, to the very books when they were written. And I want to suggest to you that if you wrote a letter and you were the Apostle Paul and you said what I just read a moment ago, the very first readers of the book of 1 Corinthians would have been thinking, you know what? This is a special book, even from the very start. OK, let me mention a second misconception that I see floating around out there all over the place. First misconception was that the authors of the New Testament did not think they were writing scripture. The second one is this, that early Christians disagreed widely over which books belonged in the New Testament. that disagreed widely over which books belonged in the New Testament. I hear this all the time from people who say, you know what? In early Christianity, no one really knew what to read. People were reading this book, and people were reading that book, and everybody disagreed, and everyone had their own lists, and everyone had their own canon, and this group was burning their books, and they were burning their books, and they were saying, banning those books, and then these people were banning the other books. No one could agree, no one could get along, everyone had their own collections, there was no common ground, and it was a big mess. And you know what? It wasn't really until much later that sort of the church got their act together and finally solved this big mess and kind of forced everyone to agree on a certain collection of books. But up until that time, up until the fourth or fifth century, there wasn't much agreement on anything when it comes in the New Testament. Now, I've read that in a number of places and seen that stated in a number of places. And I can tell you that when you look into the history of the New Testament, that whole narrative is patently false. That is not actually the case in early Christianity in the formation of the New Testament. And so I want to correct that. I want to help you realize that there was not wide-level disagreement in early Christianity. In fact, the opposite was true. As far back as we can see in the historical evidence, there's actually widespread unity over what we might call a core collection of New Testament books. Now, what do I mean by the word core? Here's what I mean. As far back as we can see, we see about, say, 21, maybe 22 out of 27 books well-established and in place almost from the very start. What are those 21 or 22 out of 27 books? Well, these would be things like the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 13 letters of Paul, Book of Acts, books like 1 Peter, 1 John, Hebrews, Revelation. When you think about that list I just gave you, that list was pretty much there from the beginning. And you know what? There was never really any dispute about those books in any meaningful sense. This shocks people. They think that every book was under dispute, every book was a controversy. I can tell you that's not the case. In fact, just think about the four Gospels with me for a moment. I just gave you the whole core collection, 21 out of 27. But if you just look at the four Gospels, amazingly, when we look at early Christianity, there was never really any discussion about them. There was never any really debate about them. In fact, as far back as we can see, it seems like it was these four and only these four that Christians recognized were unique and authoritative. So it's not like there was a vote, wasn't even a conference, wasn't even really a debate about the Gospels. In fact, there wasn't even really a debate about any of these core books in any meaningful sense. Here's what this means. This means that all the so-called controversy over books in the New Testament actually only deals with a handful of books. Probably about four, maybe five. And these books, perhaps not surprisingly, are the smallest books. These are going to be books like 2 Peter, books like 2 and 3 John, books like Jude. Just think about it for a moment. When's the last time, if you read your Bible, and I hope you do, when's the last time you read Jude? When was the last time you had a Bible study on Jude? When was the last time you had a Bible study on 3rd John? When was the last time you even read 3rd John? Now here's what's interesting, is that this actually is part of the reason why it probably took a while for those books to reach full consensus. Because they just weren't used as much. And if they're not used as much, guess what? Churches don't hear about them and it takes longer to build a consensus around them. It's not shocking that it's actually the little books, the smaller books, that took the most time in terms of reaching a coalition of the church and recognize what they are. It's no different than your own life. Now, if I went up to you and you're a Christian, I said, do you believe that Jude belongs in the Bible? And you said, you'd probably say, well, yeah, I think it belongs in the Bible. I was like, well, why don't you ever read it or study it? And you'd be like, I wouldn't have an answer for me, right? And what I want you to realize is there's nothing wrong with that. It's just the reality that the little books get used less. If the little books get used less, they are known a lot less. And so all the hubbub that you might hear about debate and dispute and controversy, guess what? It's just over a very small amount of the books. Here's the other thing I want you to realize about this second misconception. If there was a core collection of books there from the start, say 21 out of 27, that was well-established and really not under any meaningful debate, you know what that means? That means the theological makeup of Christianity was already decided almost from the beginning, regardless of what happened with the other four or five books. Let's think for a moment, let's imagine for the moment that the other four or five books never made it in. Let's just say that. Let's say we don't have Jude and don't have 2nd John or 2nd Peter. Would we still have enough to know the basic message of the gospel and to have the doctrines we believe and the truth about Jesus and the cross and the resurrection? We'd have more than enough. So what I want you to see is no matter which way the debates went over books like 2 Peter, the definition of Christianity, the theology of Christianity, the trajectory of Christianity was already established from the outset. It was really not going to be changed by virtue of those decisions. So what I want you to take away in the second point then is that there was a core collection of books almost from the start that Christians were using that were never under any real debate. Okay, that leads us to a third misconception that's out there, and this is a big one, and that is that what we call apocryphal books were just as valid as the New Testament books. Apocryphal books were just as valid as the New Testament books. Now, by the word apocryphal, I'm referring to books like the Gospel of Thomas I just mentioned a minute ago, books that seem like books that could have made it in the New Testament but were left out. And by the way, the Gospel of Thomas is not the only example I could have given earlier. I mentioned the story of the Gospel of Thomas because it's actually a fascinating story of discovery. But there's many other Gospels that never made it into the New Testament. And you probably have heard of some of these. We mentioned the Gospel of Thomas. There's the Gospel of Peter. There's the Gospel of Philip. There's the Gospel of Mary. There's the Gospel of Truth. There's the Gospel of the Twelve. There's the Gospel of Judas. And the list goes on and on. And a few years ago, there was even suggested what was called the Gospel of Jesus' wife. Can you imagine that? You're like, I didn't know Jesus was married. And he wasn't. Turns out the Gospel of Jesus' wife actually turned out to be a modern forgery. Someone in the modern day had actually faked it. Regardless, we have plenty of books from the ancient world that seem like they're Gospels, but never made it in the New Testament. And here's the misconception. The misconception is, well, they're all the same. There's no difference between them. Thomas is no different than Luke. Luke is no different than the Gospel of Peter. The Gospel of Philip is no different than the Gospel of Mark. In other words, the argument is, no gospel is any better than another one. And they're all exactly the same. And the reason we have our Gospels in our Bibles is just politics, just the group that won. They got to pick the books. It could have been just as valid to have Thomas or Peter or Philip or Mary's Gospel in there. No difference at all, because all Gospels are basically just as good as any other. And it was just the bias of some people that put some in and left others out. Now that's a very popular narrative, the idea that all Gospels are the same, they're all equally valid. Here's the problem with that narrative. That narrative only works if you don't actually look at the historical evidence. If you just stand at a distance with your arm out and say, I just want to believe all Gospels are the same, and don't look at the historical facts, you can keep that view. But if you actually start looking at the data of these New Testament writings, particularly the Gospels, you'll find out actually they're not all the same. In fact, there's a reason why Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are in our Bibles and not Thomas. I'll just mention a few quick reasons. We don't have time to fully impact this third point here, but let me just mention one very basic reason. And you may not even know this. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Gospels in our Bibles, are the earliest Gospels we have. In fact, they're the only Gospels we have that date to the first century. That little factoid right there is almost enough in and of itself. I'm going to say that again. They're not only the earliest Gospels we have, but they're the only Gospels we have that date to the first century. And when I tell you that, actually, that is not just my opinion. That is actually pretty much a consensus now in modern scholarship. Every once in a while, there'll be a scholar that tries to suggest that these other Gospels are first century texts, and it never wins the day. But almost every scholar agrees that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written in the first century, and only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written in the first century. Why does that matter? Well, it's obvious why it matters. They're recording events that happened in the first century. If you wanted to know about an event that happened in the first century, wouldn't you want a gospel written as close to those events as you possibly could? Absolutely. I mean, what if I told you, hey, I've got a great gospel about Jesus for you, and it was written in the fourth century? Like, okay, well that doesn't mean it's false, but maybe I'm not near as confident that it's true as maybe a gospel in the 1st century. So you realize that every single non-canonical gospel are all 2nd century and later. Every single one of them. Here's the other implication of that, if you haven't thought about it. If, in fact, our gospels are the only gospels that are 1st century gospels, and every other gospel are 2nd century or later, then none of those other gospels could have been written by apostles. It's impossible, because all the apostles were dead by then. The Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas, by the way. You might think, well, why is it called the Gospel of Thomas? Well, if you were writing a gospel in the second century and you wanted to get a following, what would you call it, right? You wouldn't call it Bob's Gospel, right? You'd want to give it some sort of name that had some sort of kick to it, like it would sound like an apostle's name. That's why these things were attached. They're mimicking what was already true of the canonical four. So what you realize then is the only Gospels that have a shot of going back to the Apostles are the Gospels we actually have in our Bibles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Because they're the only Gospels written in the first century. I mean, if you were to pick a Gospel, wouldn't you want a Gospel that was written by one of Jesus' companions, as opposed to a Gospel that was written by who knows who in the second, third, or fourth century? Absolutely you would. It'd be kind of like going into a bookstore and you're trying to find a biography of Abraham Lincoln and you look on the shelf and you see an anonymous biography of Abraham Lincoln and then you see another biography of Abraham Lincoln written by his best friend. Which would you want to read? probably the one by his best friend. That's effectively what you're dealing with here with the canonical Gospels. These are the Gospels that tell us the story of Jesus from the people that were there in the very first years. If that's the case, it actually makes a lot of sense why the Gospel of Thomas didn't make it in the New Testament and not these other Gospels. Okay, that leads us to a fourth misconception that's floating around out there. And this is closely related but different, and I want you to hear this misconception. And that is, fourthly, that apocryphal books were as popular as New Testament books. As popular. The prior point was that apocryphal books were as valid. And I'm like, no, historically they're not as valid. They have all kinds of problems. But this fourth point, or this fourth misconception, is that apocryphal books were as popular as the New Testament books. And here's how the narrative goes for this misconception. People say, well look, in early Christianity, everybody was reading all kinds of different books, all kinds of different Gospels, and these Gospels that didn't make it in the New Testament were just as popular and just as widely read as the books that did. In other words, they say things like, well, the Gospel of Thomas was read by lots of people, and people loved it. And it wasn't until later the church sort of forced people to stop reading Thomas when they really loved Thomas, and Thomas was just as popular as the Conocle Four. In fact, same with the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Philip or these other writings. Those were just as popular as the books that made it in the New Testament. And so you'll hear scholars say this, that these were on equal playing field in early Christianity in terms of their reception or in terms of their popularity. But there's all kinds of problems, actually, with this view. Here's the reality. The reality is that these so-called lost Gospels were not nearly as popular as the Gospels or other books that made it into our New Testament canon, and it isn't even close. Now, let's ask the question this way. How do you measure the popularity of a book anyway? How do you know if a book's popular? How would you know if the Christians were reading this book as opposed to that book? Well, there's actually ways to know. And let me mention a couple of ways we can measure popularity of books in early Christianity, which can give us a little bit of a sample of how this canon was formed. Here's one way we know what books were popular, by what books Christians copied. In other words, we can measure the amount of popularity of a book by the manuscripts left behind. And this is really exciting stuff. This is what Muhammad Ali discovered. He discovered a manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas and many other books. And we've discovered manuscripts of all kinds of books in the sands of Egypt and beyond. And whenever we discover a manuscript of a book, it tells us something. It tells us a little bit about how often that book was copied. And when you ask how often a book was copied, that tells you how much that book was read. So if you have a lot of copies of a book floating around in the sands of Egypt, that can tell you it was widely disseminated, widely read, widely copied, pretty popular. Put it another way, we can actually count the manuscripts of books left behind and give us a little bit of a sample of what kind of popularity these books have. Now, if we did that with our Gospels in our New Testament, which is largely part of the conversation we have here, it is actually pretty amazing what the stats are. If we look at the amount of manuscripts we have of our Gospels, we have probably right now well over 2,500 copies of just the four Gospels. The manuscripts we have in the thousands of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. How many do we have of the Gospel of Thomas? That's a good comparison, right? The answer is we have three. Three copies of the Gospel of Thomas. These are all manuscripts in Greek. dated before the printing press, which is how you do this. We have only three copies of the Gospel of Thomas. And by the way, the Gospel of Thomas is the one we have the most copies of before the fourth century of all these apocryphal works. And we have a scattered bit here and there of these other works, but the Gospel of Thomas actually does pretty well. So that's one way you can measure popularity, and it doesn't even really come close. Here's another way you can measure popularity. It's by how often a book was quoted by early Christian writers. What we have when we look at early Christianity is not just New Testament books. We actually have early Christian writers that are copying books, but also quoting from them. So church fathers like Irenaeus, and Tertullian, and Origen, and Cyprian, and so on down the line. All these church fathers are talking about scriptural books. They're citing from them and quoting from them. Not that different than people quoting from the Bible today. If you were to ascertain which Bible books people were reading today, you could look in writings and see what they were quoting from, right? I can tell you something about the popularity of certain books. Well, when we compare the frequency of quotations or the frequency of citations, we actually end up with exactly the same result, which is that our canonical books, particularly the four Gospels, were cited in droves more than any other book. One example of this is the scholar Clement of Alexandria. Clement of Alexandria was an Egyptian scholar out of Alexandria, Egypt in the late second, early third century. And we actually have tons of work from Clement. We can see what he was quoting and what he was writing and so on. And he quotes from the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, thousands of times. Thousands. How many times does he quote from Gospels outside the New Testament? The number is in the teens. 16, 17 times. So if you just look at the frequency of citation, you're like, it doesn't even compare. The popularity of one book far outweighs the other. In fact, what we see is the popularity of books tends to match the books that eventually became part of the New Testament canon. You'll be interested to know that when books like the Gospel of Thomas are mentioned in early Christianity, they're actually condemned widely by those who mention them. There's no real sense that they were ever really received or followed. They're pretty much viewed as heretical books from the very start. So what you realize then is when it comes to popularity or what books were widely read, it's actually still the same books that we've been talking about in our New Testaments. That leads to the last, final, and fifth misconception. This is my favorite. This is my favorite because of how widespread it is and how there's actually much more or less evidence for this than any of the four other things I've talked about. But the final misconception out there was that the New Testament canon was decided by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. That the New Testament canon was decided by Constantine at the Council of Nicaea. This idea is everywhere. I read this in places that it should not be. Maybe you've seen it as well. And this idea goes something like this, that early Christianity, as I've already said, was a bit of a mess when it came to what books to read. No one agreed on anything. And then Constantine was converted. Here's a pagan emperor who becomes a Christian. And Constantine's number one goal was to bring unity to the empire. And so in order to have unity, he knows he needs a canon of books that everyone can agree on. But no one agreed on it. So what did he do? He called a council. We call this the Council of Nicaea. He gets all the Christians together, and they vote. And they pick a Bible. And they ban books they don't like. And they pick the books they do like. And there's the Bible. And the reason we have these books in the Bible and not those books is because of Constantine converting to Christianity. And it was all voted on by the Council of Nicaea. Now that comes pretty close to what you might call an urban legend. Urban legends are those things that just have no basis in fact, but people just say them so much that everyone begins to believe them. There's actually no evidence at all historically that Constantine had anything to do with the choosing of the books of the canon. In fact, by the time of Constantine, this was already decided. By the time of Constantine, the New Testament was pretty much already in place. So there wasn't really much to decide, first of all. Secondly, the Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with the development of the canon. The Council of Nicaea is what came up with what we call the Nicaean Creed. Some of you go to churches that occasionally will cite the Nicaean Creed, and you'll recite it. It tells about how we understand Jesus's divinity, and it's a way of expressing his relationship to the Father. It's a wonderful creed. That's what the council was primarily about, but it wasn't designed to pick books. In fact, the books pretty much had already been picked. Now, I think I know why people like the idea that Constantine chose the books of the canon. Because, first of all, I think that culturally, and if we're honest, even all of us to some extent just love a good conspiracy theory. We love this idea that, well, everybody's got it wrong until now, right? We love this idea that there's this secret information that can overturn all of what we believe. And we just kind of are drawn to conspiracy theories because they're sort of fun and interesting. So that's one reason. But I think there's another reason why people think Constantine did this and sort of get drawn to that idea. They like the idea that to think that the Bible is just the result of political maneuvering. That the Bible is the way it is because someone in politics made it this way. and it was sort of forced on the church. Now why would I say people like that or are drawn to it? What I mean by that is I think it gives people a reason to say, you know what, I never really liked those books anyway and now I can really dismiss them because it's just the result of sort of political machinations and I don't have to take it at face value anymore. It's just power hungry people pushing their views on others is all it is. Well, I want to suggest to you that when you realize how the canon really formed, it's actually not power hungry people pushing their views on anybody. Because as I've already said, we have these books from almost the very start. They were written with an authoritative sense about them. By the second century, you've already got a core canon in place without a council or a vote or a committee. To put it another way, the way the canon formed is it formed organically. It formed naturally and innately growing up out of the soil of early Christianity. It wasn't imposed on Christianity. It came up from within Christianity. The reason I think people love the Constantine idea is because if they can say the Bible is imposed on Christianity, well, they don't have to worry about it. It's just one of those political things that I can just dismiss because this is what power-hungry people do. But I can tell you this, it really isn't the result of power-hungry people. It seems to be something that innately grew within the church as it developed. Now, as I draw these five sort of misconceptions together, what are the implications of this? And then I'm going to take your questions. The implications of this are actually pretty simple. And that is, these five misconceptions, and by the way, there's others. These five misconceptions, I think, are usually designed to help people sort of say, you know what, I don't really know what the New Testament has to say, and I don't really even know what Jesus' message is, but it doesn't really concern me because it's just one of those historical oddities you can't trust anyway. But I want to suggest to you, if you can trust that these are the right books, if we can trust the way these books were formed, then suddenly it might be the time to recognize that we should reconsider this message that it contains. And it contains an amazing message. Jesus had amazing things to say. Monumental claims. Monumental claims, first of all, about himself. That he in fact was the Lord of heaven and earth. That he had come to save sinners and redeem them. That he was the sort of judge of the universe. Jesus had amazing claims about himself. Amazing claims, by the way, that we would be good to dismiss if we had no reason to believe them. But, of course, Christians have a reason to believe them. Not only from the testimony of the Bible itself, but also from the resurrection of Jesus. Even Jesus' own disciples doubted him until he rose from the dead and vindicated who he really was. But here's the other thing. Jesus not only had things to say about himself, he actually had things to say about you and me. Things that, truthfully, we need to hear. Things that help us realize that, you know what? We don't have our act together like we think we do. That we've fallen short of God's glory. That we actually need a Savior. We need to be forgiven of our sins. Jesus linked these two together and basically said that who I am is designed to help who you are. And that I'm here to not call righteous people, not call the healthy, but to call the sick to myself. If that's the message of the gospel, And it is, then if you realize where these books came from, then we have every more reason to take that message seriously and really consider it, ponder it, and think about it. OK, I want to take this time now to transition out of those five misconceptions and onto your questions. And here's your shot to ask a question. And it could be a question about anything I've said here in this presentation. It can also be a question about other Bible questions you have. Maybe you've always had this Bible theology question burning in your mind, and you're saying, OK, here's my shot to stump the professor. So here's your shot to stump the professor. So I just ask you to raise your hand. I'll call on you. And I'll try to repeat your question if I hear it so that I can get it on the recording for those who might listen to this later. So the floor is open to you. Yes, in the back there. So what do you make of the argument that John is in fact sermonizing on Jesus' words and parables rather than actually quoting them? Yes, absolutely. Great question. Okay, so that question obviously stems out of some study of this and probably, I'm guessing, a religion class of some sort that probably tackled this. So the question was, if you didn't hear it, was does John's gospel take the words of Jesus and instead of quoting them exactly, does he sermonize them? Or another way to say it, does he shape them in new ways and put them in his own words? This is a long-standing question because when we look at the Synoptic Gospels, we see one style of the teaching of Jesus. When we look at John, we see a different style in the teaching of Jesus. People say, well look, these two are clearly incompatible. I don't think so if you understand the way history was done in the ancient world. We have this idea that if you're going to quote somebody in the modern day, and this is the way it is in the modern day, that you've got to quote them word for word. You've got to get it exactly right. And that's true in the modern day. If I'm being interviewed by somebody in the news media, they should at least get my exact words down, right? But in the ancient world, that's not how history was done. They didn't always quote people verbatim in the ancient world. In fact, lots of times in the ancient world, they would summarize someone's statements, they would paraphrase them, they would rewrite them in their own words. I don't know if I would use the term sermonize here, but this was actually common practice. This isn't something the Gospels did and no one else was doing it. This is exactly the way history is done. There's lots of reasons for that. One of the reasons for that is space. Jesus gives a whole long sermon, you want to summarize it, you're going to give a little nugget summary of it. That's one reason to do this. Another reason is that sometimes you want to help your audience understand it, and your audience is coming from a background where they may not get exactly what you're saying. You need to help them understand exactly what Jesus is saying. But here's the other reason why you have to do this, is because Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic. If Jesus spoke in Aramaic and the Gospels are written in Greek, which is what they were, guess what? You have to translate it into Greek. And as you do, different translators are going to use different styles. It's not that unusual in the way translators have different styles today. And so those are all part of what's in play in terms of the way these Gospel styles fit together. There's a lot of great books out there about linking or about exploring the historicity of John compared to the synoptics. And afterwards, I can give you some recommendations on those. if you want. Great question. All right, other questions out there? Yes? This is another question about John. So there are some debates about the authorship. Like, it was written, of course, by the old disciple, or written by a group later, or added back in. Yes. So like, you know, half of John chapter 8 is, it was not in the earliest manuscripts, you know, where the go and said no more kept the first down thing. So, if It is discovered that it's written by a group of John's followers after John has died, and therefore the apostle is not speaking with the authority of Christ in his gospel. Does that, or does that not void the idea that these are authoritative because these men are writing and speaking with the voice of Christ himself. Yeah, great question. Apparently you all have some lectures on John that you're digesting out there, which is great. It's a great question. So if you didn't catch all that, basically she says, well look, what about the authorship of John? Are we sure about it? And what if it was written by a group? If it was written by a group, can we really think it still bears apostolic authority? Yes, those are great questions. By the way, the issue of the pericope of the adulterous woman in John 8 really has nothing to do with authorship, by the way. That's a later text-critical issue, which we can tackle in its own right if that's of curiosity to you. But here's my thoughts on the authorship of John. First of all, if John was written by John's followers, okay, and they pulled together, they were his companions and disciples, they pulled together his teachings and put it in a gospel, actually, I don't think that'd be a problem. Here's why, because that's pretty much what we have in the Gospel of Mark. If you know about the Gospel of Mark, Mark was not himself an apostle. But we have very good reasons to know where Mark got his information from, because the early Christian teaching about this is very plain, and it's got a very old, deep, historical pedigree, and that is that Mark was a disciple of Peter. In fact, the earliest understandings of Mark was that when you read Mark, you're basically getting Peter. It's basically Peter's material. So the way to think about that is that Mark kind of held the pen, but it's really Peter's content. So if we concluded that John was written by people who were his companions, but it's still his content, I don't think it would negate the Apostolic Authority at all. That said, actually, we have great reasons John wrote John. We have some of the best evidence for John's authorship of that gospel than perhaps any other gospel. And I can't fully articulate it here, but I'll just give you one piece of evidence for why we think John wrote John. And that is some of the earliest testimony. Let me explain. One of the earliest authors that tells us the authorship of John's gospel is a second century church father by the name of Irenaeus. He's very plain. The guy who wrote the gospel with the name John was John the son of Zebedee, one of the 12. Okay, so Irenaeus taught that, and your next question is, well, why should I believe Irenaeus? What does he know anyway, right? Well, the question is, well, where did Irenaeus get his information from? And here's the amazing thing, is he probably, well, not probably, almost certainly got it from an earlier church father by the name of Polycarp. And you're thinking, well, why should I care about that? Why should Polycarp get it right, who wrote John? Here's the answer. Polycarp's mentor was John. So I want you to hear this. There's the Apostle John, who disciples Polycarp, who disciples Irenaeus. So Irenaeus is one person removed from John. This is Polycarp. One person removed from John. He tells us that John wrote John. What's the chance that he got it wrong? What's the chance he's lying? People say, oh, we can't trust these church fathers with making things up. Well, maybe. And certainly could have gotten it wrong. It's possible. But that kind of historical proximity is exactly what you want in historical witnesses, a very good reason, trace source, back to how we would know. The chances of them messing that up in that short amount of time are very slim indeed. So great question. Other questions out there about any of the things I've said tonight? Yes. Dr. Kruger, this is kind of a broader topic, and I don't want to take up all the question time, but could you speak briefly to why we can trust and believe that the Old Testament has authority on it? Yeah, great question. So the question is, is there reasons to think that we can trust the Old Testament too? And the answer is yes. Lots of great reasons for this. Obviously, in one session, unless you wanted to be here till midnight, we're not going to be able to both do the NT and OT at the same time. I actually have a number of colleagues that have written on this extensively. There's a lot of great literature out there on the development of the Old Testament canon. I could give you some suggestions on books to read. We have great reasons to think that the Old Testament is transmitted reliably. I have a chapter in a recent book where I actually cover partially the Old Testament canon along with the New. I get these articles I've written, I forget where they appear. I've written a few articles recently, I forgot I wrote, and then I found out later I wrote them. This is rather humorous. Someone will say, hey, I read this article you wrote, I thought it was great. I was like, I don't remember writing that. Welcome to my life. But I've written an article partially covering some of these in prior places. But we can talk, I can give you a bunch of different references to it. Too much to cover now. I can say this, is that with the help of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we actually have a lot of confidence in the origins of the Old Testament canon. If you don't know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are, That is another interesting archaeological discovery, also made by a shepherd, I might add. It seems like everybody who's a shepherd finds books in the sands of Egypt. But the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948 by a shepherd looking for lost sheep, if you can believe this, and literally was throwing rocks in a cave, trying to scare out the sheep that go in there to cool off from the heat. And one of the caves he threw a rock in, and he heard broken pottery. So he went in there, and that was the beginning of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which to summarize them quickly, are made up of Old Testament manuscripts that predate Jesus by two centuries. They're the oldest Old Testament manuscripts we have. Here's what's amazing about that, is that we can see pretty much the Qumran community was reading the same books we read now. That's one thing. And we can see pretty much that the Qumran community had basically the same text we have now, particularly Isaiah's text, which was preserved with meticulous, careful scribal activity. So there's a few quick thoughts for you on, I think, which is an equally interesting topic I'm sure we could discuss another night. Great, yes. Yeah, great question. I just lectured on this at Reform Theological Seminary about two weeks ago, and your question is great. So if you didn't hear the question, what about the author of the book of Hebrews? Since it's anonymous, doesn't that interrupt our confidence in its authority? And this has been a scholarly issue for generations. Who wrote the book of Hebrews? There's been a lot of debate on it, even since the early church. And the question I think you're getting at here is, well, look, if we're not sure who the author is, why would we think it has apostolic authority? And the answer is because it tells us it has apostolic authority. And let me explain. In chapter 2 of Hebrews, the author basically does the same thing Luke does. He basically says, I got my information directly from the eyewitnesses and apostles themselves. This book, in effect, is apostolic content. He positions himself very much like Luke positions himself in Luke's prologue. In other words, Luke wasn't an apostle either, right? But Luke tells us, in effect, I'm an apostolic man. What that means is, not that he's personally an apostle, but that he's taught by them, preserves their tradition, and is passing it down in his writings. Now, of course, claiming something doesn't make it true, right? But here's the question we want to ask about the Hebrews. Is there any reason to think that the author's own apostolic connections are probable? Is there any reason to think that they're historically likely? And the answer actually is we have lots of reasons for this. Let me mention some of them. First of all, the date of the book. We have every reason to think this book dates to the early 60s, right in the middle of when the apostles were doing their things. Secondly, the book also mentions Paul's companion Timothy, which is an apostolic person in the apostolic circle. Thirdly, this book was used by early Christian writers almost right out of the gate and recognized as apostolic. The example I'm thinking of here is 1 Clement at the end of the first century. Now, when you look at all those intersecting lines of evidence, you can say, okay, not only does the author position himself kind of like the same way Luke does, but he actually has good reasons to think that he probably is in that spot. Here's the other thing I'll add to the question about the authorship of Hebrews, is that there's actually been a monograph that came out a couple years ago arguing that the most likely author of Hebrews was Luke. Interestingly. I think it's fairly persuasive. I'm not 100% convinced. I think at the end of the day, we're still not sure exactly the identity of the author. But the fact is, is that he positions himself a lot like Luke does when Luke writes his gospel. So that's a great question. It's a thorny issue. I wish we knew who the author was. We don't know for sure. Some of the early Christians thought it was Paul, actually. In fact, Hebrews was actually lumped in with Paul's letters in our earliest manuscript of Paul's letters, known as P46. But we don't know in the end. But like I said, I think we still have very good reasons to receive it as apostolic, even without knowing. Just as a side note on that question, one of the things that Dave Latham will tell you, if you go see Dave at the table in the back, is one of the resources we have at RTS to help people is our RTS mobile app. So it's an app you can download on your phone, whether you have Apple or basically a Google phone, what have you. The point is, if you have the RTS mobile app, you can download our courses. almost all of them for free. And my Hebrews to Rev course is on there. So you can go and listen to my full lectures on the authorship of Hebrews for free on there if you want to learn more about that. Other questions? Yes? First of all, I want to say thank you for this talk. I found it very good. That's coming a lot from a guy who's a Blue Devils fan. Blue Devils fan? What are you doing here then, right? OK, very good. My question is, I often want to hear of some of these disputed accounts, for instance, John 8 or the end of the Gospel of Mark, where we're not sure if it belongs. Yeah. What's often brought up is, well, even if these aren't, the content that they're in does not affect any doctrine. that we know, or the concerned doctrine, you can find it somewhere else in what's considered canon. Is that a good argument, considering that, say, you can say the same thing about many canon books of the Bible? I don't even know if that's a good question or not. For instance, if we lost the Gospel of Matthew, what major Christian doctrine would we have lost? Yeah, great question. If you didn't hear the whole question, the question pertains to what is known as the long ending of Mark, or the story of the adulterous woman and end of John 7, beginning of John 8, which are the two sort of longest text critical sort of things in the New Testament. And what I mean by text critical is verses that were added later by scribes. I get this question a lot. It's a very common question. And you're saying that, hey, when I hear that, people's response is, well, it doesn't affect any doctrine. But you don't find that necessarily very compelling. Hey, what if you lost a whole book? That wouldn't affect any doctrine either, but wouldn't you care? I think is your point. Yeah, although I will say this. I hear what you're saying. Although I think the discussion of text criticism and the discussion of canon are two distinct categories. And we're talking about a lot less material here in a text critical variant than we are in a book, most of the time at least, unless you're talking about 3 John. But even with 3 John, there's a lot more verses than these. And so I think you're talking about two different categories. Secondly, I think that the issue of doctrine not being affected is just to help people realize the impact. In other words, should I be bothered by these verses being there or not? They're like, well, look, they don't really change anything in the story, so don't worry about them in that perspective. But actually, my response is different than either of those, for what it's worth. I don't think those passages are actually all that in doubt. And what I mean by that is I don't think either of them are original. And I think the only reason that we get bothered by them is because we have them appear historically in English texts. And we think we really wish they were still there. But if you're reading early Christian manuscripts from, say, the second, third, and fourth century, you wouldn't have likely found these in many of them, if any of them at all. And it never would even have occurred to you. So, I guess my point is, I think on a text critical level, there's fairly a good reason to think they're not original. If so, then there's really not much else to say. I know people get bothered by the fact that we have some manuscript with those in them. Fair enough. That raises a whole other issue about text criticism and this sort of thing. But it really doesn't affect the integrity of the text if you know they're not original. That's the point I want to make. If you know they're not original, then there's no impact on the integrity of the text. Here's the real concern about textual criticism. If there was a major change and we didn't know it, that would be the real problem, right? What if there was a big text-critical problem about text I never even knew was a text-critical problem? That would be the danger. But if we know these things were not original, it doesn't challenge the integrity of the New Testament. Great question. Yeah, over here. I have a question. You mentioned the popularity of the second text. And I started thinking, the way that I thought about it is that you mentioned the popularity of the text by its similarity to the text that came before that. How would you kind of, I was going to ask this question, but how would you connect, like, the epistles of Aristotle, the three-day testament to Christ, the similarity between its Yeah, great questions. You're asking about popularity of texts, and I think you made the claim in there that you can measure the popularity of texts by their earlier influence. I think that might be the place in the question that needs some more clarity because I can see when you look at a text. measuring what its sources are and what influenced the author and where the author got his ideas from, but that's a separate question than the popularity that that text ended up having after it was written. So you're really talking about compositional issues, whereas I'm talking about reception issues, which are really two unrelated things. Now I'm happy to talk about compositional issues when it relates to the teachings of Jesus and so on, but I'm not sure those two are related in the way you've laid them out. So in other words, people found that book interesting because they already thought Aristotle was interesting and they saw his influence there, kind of thing? Is that what you mean? Yeah, that you're saying that you're measuring the popularity of a book because if it contains information from Aristotle in it, and people liked Aristotle, that explains why they found it to be interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably really the heart of your question, is the common ground between some of Jesus' teachings and earlier moral teachings, and that's absolutely the case. In fact, you'll find that most New Testament scholars and even biblical theologians acknowledge that common ground. I don't think common ground necessarily means Jesus used those things as a source, obviously, but that Jesus is not the first person to say, love your neighbors yourself. He's not the first person to suggest these things. And there was overlap, certainly, with Greco-Roman philosophers and writers. And Paul acknowledges this, too, in even his own sayings and teachings, particularly when you think about his speech in Acts 17 to the Areopagus crew there. I'm not sure what implications there are for that in terms of the validity of these books. I wouldn't necessarily suggest that they're invalid because they echo earlier Greco-Roman writers and philosophers. But I think it's no doubt the case that you're right about that connection. So good. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So the question has to do with translations over the years and whether that hampers our understanding for the validity of these books. So yes, there's been lots of translations over the years. And I'm assuming that when you say translation, you mean translation into other languages. Some people, when they say translation, mean transmission. Those aren't the same thing. So I'm assuming you mean translation. And yes. Actually, the Bible started to be translated into other languages, not thinking of the New Testament here. as early as the second century. In fact, some of our earliest Latin texts come from the second century, and the Bible is translated into all kinds of texts. It was translated into Syriac, and Ethiopic, and Coptic, and all kinds of different language in the ancient world. And then, of course, there's modern translations too, right? Where we take our Bibles and translate them into English, and French, and German, and Spanish, and beyond. Here's the thing, though, is all those translations don't really hamper our assurance about the text and about its validity and truth. And here's why. It's because we have access to the original, namely the Greek and Hebrew. Whenever you translate the Bible into Latin or the New Testament into Spanish, you're always starting with the same base, which is the Greek text. So it really doesn't hamper our confidence in the authority of the text at all. Now, some translations are not good. And some are great, and it just depends on the one you're reading. I get asked all the time, what's your favorite English translation? And we can get into that if you want to. I think we have a lot of good English translations, but then some are maybe not so great. And you just have to always use the Greek, the original Greek and the original Hebrew as your base starting point for any of those particular conversations. I don't know, the last time you actually tried to shop for a Bible, I don't know if anyone does this anymore in a real Bible. you know, a Christian bookstore, because everything's online now, but you used to be walking in a Christian bookstore and there used to be a wall of Bibles, and you're like, where, how, how do I pick this, you know? Isn't there like a section of like Bible for Dummies or something where I just go and get like a basic Bible without all the accoutrements and crazy, you know, it's hard to pick a Bible today, but, and a lot of it is because of all the different translations out there. You can actually get a hold of ancient translations of the New Testament if you go to the right historical resources. A lot of my colleagues actually do work in Coptic. Some of our earliest New Testament manuscripts are in Coptic. Not that you'd probably have that much fun in Coptic, but it's an ancient Egyptian language, if you ever want to study it. Good question. Yes? So, with regard to the second feature, I've heard some, I've done a bit of scholarship on this, and it seems like they What you hear is that, oh, the consensus scholar says it's not Peter. It was written after when he was supposed to have died. Can the apostolic authority still apply if it was written by a scribe or one of his associates? And Bart Ehrman said, you're accepting a letter which is claiming to be a person's not. That's a lie. It's a fraud. So he was very strong language, but also clear. Yeah, that's a great question. So Bart Ehrman wrote a book called Forged a few years ago where he made similar statements like that. And also he wrote a book on what's called the larger version of this for OUP called Forgery and Counterforgery in Early Christianity. And I actually reviewed his book. You can find my review on my website if you want my review of it as I go at length into these things. I've also written a full-length article on 2 Peter and its authenticity, and that's also on my website. So if you want to read more on 2 Peter's authorship, I cover that. And I cover actually exactly the question you're asking in both those places. And here's the amazing thing, and someone will probably want to record this and write it down, is I actually agree with about 95% of Ehrman's book on forgery and counterforgery, which is saying a lot, because I've critiqued a lot of his books over the years. But I actually think he's right, and here's why I think he's right. I think that the authorial claims of 2 Peter are indicative of the fact that the author is claiming to be the Apostle Peter himself. So if, in fact, the author was not the Apostle Peter himself, then I think it would be a forgery, and it would be effectively a lie, and therefore not worthy of our assent. So I think he's right about that. Here's the thing is that we both agree that if it's not Peter, it's a lie. It's just that I think it's Peter, and he doesn't, right? And so there's where the split is. It's not over the implications of what we would do with the book if it wasn't Peter. We agree on that. The question is whether, in fact, it was Peter. You can read my full argument about the authority of Second Peter and my defense of its authorship. If you didn't get my website information before, the URL is michaeljkruger.com, but the name of my website is called Cannon Fodder, which is sort of the pun here. Of course, cannon there is spelled with one N, as opposed to the explosion cannon with two Ns. If you have to explain it, it's not funny anymore. I have a lot of videos, articles, blog series in reference to my other academic work on there if you want to dive deeper. That's a good resource for you. I guess a number of my books are here that Dave brought, so when you're done, those are on the table, too. I saw a question over here. Other questions? I came in tonight, and I maybe grew up believing God, or something hasn't been super relevant in my life. And now, I see a lot of arguments for maybe the Bible isn't a claim to be. How do I connect maybe the belief that I grew up with in God to the New Testament itself as the truth? And how does that impact my life moving forward tonight? Is your question pertaining to growing up not believing, or you're growing up? Either way. I feel like a lot of people in America grow up with this, there's probably a God. I just don't really know who that God is. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, most people in America, at least, are probably going to grow up with some vague sense of God. Some of you probably grew up in homes where your parents maybe were believers or maybe they just felt like, you know, going to church is a good thing. By golly, we should go. You're not really sure what I believe about it or not. Here's the reality is most people grow up in their life with a very vague, undefined, unresearched, unreflective view of the God of the Bible. And here's the other thing, is that most people who grow up with that perspective are happy to leave it there. They're like, well, I've got a vague sense of what the God of the Bible is about. I've got a vague sense of Jesus. I've had a little religion. I've gone to church a few times. Yeah, I've had enough. I want to suggest to you, and I'm not sure exactly if this is where your question was going, I do want to suggest to you, if that's your background, the fact that you're here tonight is a really good thing, because I'm convinced that one of the things that people need to do is take seriously the claims in the Bible and really reflect upon them and study them. Now, you may reflect upon them and study them, and you may conclude, I think the Bible's rubbish, and you're free to reach that conclusion. But at least if you studied it and read it, you can reach that conclusion with some level of credibility. What I've learned over the years in a lot of conversations just like this one, is that most people who reject the Bible have actually never seriously read it or studied it. I'm stunned by that. They have their little reasons for why they think it should be swept away and I think most people just wanted to sweep it off the table and be done with it. I don't have to worry about it anymore because I heard something on the internet about the Bible and therefore I can sweep it away without giving it any real consideration. So my challenge to you all is no matter how you grew up, You may have grown up in an atheist home. You may have grown up in a fundamentalist home. Whichever home you grew up in, the fact is, here's your chance, and that you're here is a good sign, to really freshly investigate and dive deeply into these issues. And I hope tonight's a great time to begin that. Some honest inquiry is a great place to start. Whatever you think you know or don't know, more research will always be helpful as you ponder what these books say. Because like it or not, or believe it or not, whether you believe the Bible or not, these are the most influential books in the entire Western world, and maybe the world as a whole. And so they certainly are worth further reflection. So good question. Any other questions before we are done tonight? David, I don't know where we are on time, my friend, so you need to help me out here. Are we about there? One more? I see a hand over here. Good. Make it a good one, man. This is it. You've got to end with a zinger here. Well, that question's fairly broad. So how we see scripture, you could include in that that the Nicene Council had to do with how we interpret scripture. Well, it certainly had to do with that. But the question I'm addressing tonight is, did the Nicene Council determine what should be scripture or what should be in scripture? Or to put it another way, when they got to the Council of Nicaea, did someone say to them, OK, we all disagree on what books should be in the Bible. Before this council ends, by golly, we're going to reach an agreement. Is that the kind of thing that happened? And my suggestion is that not remotely. Didn't have anything to do with what? Nope. No, not at all. In fact, I mean, you can go read about the Council of Nicaea, and you'll find that it really had nothing to do with that. Now, later councils did. So Hippo, Carthage, others, they make all kinds of comments on the canon of Scripture. And maybe those are swirling in here in your head, but not Nicaea. And the reason I mention Nicaea is because that's what normally people say, and that's what Constantine was overlooking. Good. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it very much.