SOT LitnerStandard of Truth listener companion
Sheep or scripture?
S4E22 · Formation of the New Testament (formerly premium content from JSR)
0:00 / 1:06:53
13 chapters
← All episodes
Standard of Truth · Season 4 · Episode 22 · 1:06:53

Formation of the New Testament (formerly premium content from JSR)

Not until Athanasius's Easter letter in 367, over 40 years after the Nicene Creed, did any Christian leader list the books of our Bible as scripture.

Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·

How did the books of the New Testament come to be chosen, and when was the Bible's canon actually set?

Richard

Richard loses his pitch for an episode on New Zealand sheep wool, so they replay a premium Joseph Smith and the Restoration lecture for missionary season. Gerrit explains that competing books were circulating in early Christianity and introduces Marcion. Marcion couldn't square the God of the Old Testament with Jesus, so he threw out the Hebrew Bible and much of the New Testament, and he won influence in Rome partly because he was wealthy, much like T. Boone Pickens at Oklahoma State. Gerrit then reads Athanasius's festal letter of 367, the first record of a Christian leader listing the books of our Bible, and explains why books like the Shepherd of Hermas were left out. He ends with Jerome's Vulgate and the point that for nearly 400 years Christians had no settled Bible, which matters when people say the canon is closed.

Who comes upMarcionAthanasiusJeromeAriusHermasSaulT. Boone PickensJoseph Smith
Now playing · 0:00

Sheep or scripture?

Richard's pitch for an episode on New Zealand wool loses out to a replay.

Chapters

Tap a chapter to jump there

Transcript

98 moments · tap a time to play from there
Richard Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth Podcast. I'm Gerrit's friend, Professor Richard LeDuc. Now, from time to time, Gerrit and I disagree on the content of the episodes that we do. Now, I do no research. That is obvious for anyone that listens to the podcast. Gerrit spends hours and hours and hours in research for each of the different episodes to prepare and to be educated. I don't know anything about any of these topics, and I don't even pretend to. That said, I had recently read a journal article on the declining sheep wool production in New Zealand. I felt like that would be a perfect episode to share here, or a perfect topic to share here on the Standard of Truth podcast. Gerrit agreed to disagree. And so we decided that rather than talking about, you know, from the height of sheep production, where the sheep to person ratio in New Zealand in 1981 was 22 sheep for every one person, to where now it's four and a half sheep to every one person, and what the implications are for international wool trade.
Richard Again, Gerrit didn't think that that was an interesting topic. I, again, agree to disagree. We decided to replay an episode from Joseph Smith and the Restoration. We do this for missionaries preparing to go out. We did this last year with a couple of episodes. I think we'll do it every year in April or May, a couple of episodes from the Premium that both promotes the Premium as well as provides that content to missionaries. Like last week when I mentioned missionaries that are serving, we give free access to all of our Premium as well as the free content. All we need is for them to send an email to questions at standardoftruthpodcast.com or for their friends or family to send us those emails. And then we share that information with, or access to the missionaries so that they can go in and listen to those. So I did also want to provide a quick update.
Richard Australian rules football is underway. I made a prediction of Collingwood as the champion this year. Now they are currently fifth in the standings with many matches to be played before the championship. The leader currently is the Sydney Swans. I believe I had them as my dark horse pick. I'll have to go back and listen to the recording. I'm fairly confident that I mentioned them and that I had them as my second. I'm extremely confident of that. But the most important thing is that Collingwood is ahead of Melbourne. So rather than talk about the nearly 50% decline in New Zealand wool prices from 2013 to today and the nearly 10x increase in per-hectare carbon farming rather than raising sheep, we are going to talk about the New Testament and its formation as we replay this Joseph Smith and the Restoration episode that I think that you're really going to like.
Richard So thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next week.
Intro Welcome to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, a Standard of Truth podcast production. In this podcast, hosts Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc will discuss the events of the restoration in the order they occurred. Listeners will follow Joseph Smith as he rises from the obscurity of a poor farm boy to the prophet of the restoration. They will learn of the trials and triumphs, the miracles and misery of Joseph Smith and early members of the Church.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, a Standard of Truth podcast production. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. For the past several episodes of Joseph Smith and the Restoration, we've talked about different councils that have occurred as the early members of the Christian church try to define the nature of Jesus. And in this episode, we are gonna jump around a little bit as we talk about how we got the canon of scripture that we have.
Gerrit Yeah, especially given the fact that, you know, even though we have these councils, remember as we left off, things were not entirely settled. Now, of course, if you talk to a Catholic, they will say that things were settled, right? I mean, no, no, things were always settled. It's just that all these heretics kept making stuff up. But they are going to, you know, the reality is that there are multiple controversies that are still going on inside the Christian church because you have multiple heresies. You have multiple ways, again, that people are dealing with how it is that Jesus is the Messiah, that how it is Jesus is divine. And as people are unable to come to terms with what the eventual Christian teaching will be about Jesus, being fully human and fully God, being both fully mortal and fully divine, you're going to have heretical groups that are arguing for something different.
Gerrit Now, in that contest of different arguments, one of the things that's going to become a powerful part of the argument is the various books that are in circulation, claiming to be written by either the apostles, the companions of the apostles, or other ancient people connected to them in some way. There are multiple books that are circulating in the ancient world. We don't know exactly how widely. One of the problems with trying to trace the widespread nature of a book that is later deemed heretical is that once a book is deemed heretical, it's then destroyed everywhere. I like to liken it to the people who voted for Ross Perot.
Gerrit Now according to statistics, voting statistics, like 17% of Americans voted for Ross Perot, you can't find them. They don't actually exist. No one has their Ross Perot, you know, sign from their yard proudly displayed in their kitchen, saying if only he'd have been able to win, things have been better. Is it that 20% of Americans didn't vote for Ross Perot? No, it's that after the third party candidacy of Ross Perot was kind of a debacle and it became kind of an embarrassment, well, nobody was keeping those signs out. No one was bragging to their friends. You know what? I was like one of the local leaders of the Ross Perot for president. You don't hear that one very often.
Gerrit Similarly, with these books that are in circulation, if they're later deemed heretical, well, what do we do with heretics? What do we do with both heretics and their books? We like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We burn them anyway. What do we burn upon the heretics? Their heretical books. I mean, we destroy everything there is about them. By the time of the mid-fourth century, so by the time that we're having these theological things decided, 325, Council of Nicaea, it's not until the fifth century that you have the Council of Chalcedon. But during the three and four hundreds, you start to have these arguments about what actually are the canonical books, and which ones are not.
Gerrit And one of the things that seems to, at least scholars believe, that one of the things that jump starts the attempt to really get a handle on what books are authoritative, is a heretic by the name of Marcion. Now, of course, I call him a heretic. I mean, Marcion's followers thought that he was, you know, the teacher who knew the most about Jesus. Marcion is an incredibly influential Christian teacher, and he's in Rome. So he actually is from North Africa, but he eventually goes to Rome. And Marcion is someone that we talked about a little bit earlier, when we talked about some of these heresies about how do you deal with the fact that, you know, Jesus is God and that God is God, and yet there's only one God, and you can't have two gods. And by the way, how is it that God, who's perfect, created this world that seems terrible?
Gerrit Why didn't God create a better world? Why didn't God create one that wasn't terrible? Well, Marcion is this theologian who is going to posit an abandonment of monotheism. There's a lot of things we can't explain when it comes to monotheism because of the things that Christians want to affirm. Christians want to affirm what appear to be contradictory positions. They absolutely want to affirm that God is absolutely all-powerful, that God has all power, that God can do whatever God wants. And yet at the same time, Christians want to affirm that God is absolutely all-good.
Gerrit Good in the most perfect sense. He's all mercy. He's all kindness. He's all justice. He's all everything. Nothing can be more good than God is. Well, those are nice platitudes to say. It's all fine and good to say, nothing is more good than God. The problem is this world is terrible. How do you deal with the fact that this world is terrible? This world is terrible. If God created everything, then that means God created this world terrible. Now, of course, a Christian will run, you know, tackle me away from the microphone and tell people not to listen and say, no, no, no, it's because of the fall. It's because of the fall. It was perfect when God made it. God made it perfect. God was perfect. God made it perfect. And then it fell.
Gerrit And it's all our sinful, stupid cells. And Adam, what a jump. You know, like they will quickly push to, to throw all of the blame for the horrors of this world on Adam. And even if you point to things like, well, what about that tornado in Mississippi that just killed 20 people? I mean, whose agency is that? Because God created a world where tornadoes could kill people. And even if God created a world where tornadoes could kill people, why didn't God just stop that tornado from killing people? If you say God doesn't have the power to stop that tornado, well, then suddenly God's not all powerful. If God does have the power to stop that tornado, and God doesn't, even though the result is going to be incalculable suffering and misery among the families that are affected, then how is it that God is still good?
Gerrit I mean, the problem is you can even go to a higher level because God is so all powerful. God can have any result that God wants. So even if a Christian throws up, well, yeah, but God allowed that tornado to happen because in the deaths of those people, other people will be turned to Jesus. And so it's kind of like a martyr's sacrifice. Everything happens for a reason. Yes, these people died, but they went immediately to heaven and their deaths unlocked the gospel to other people. And that's why God did it, which is a great explanation. The only problem is if God is actually all-powerful, then God doesn't need to kill 20 people in Mississippi to open the gospel to other people. God can just open the gospel to other people by snapping his fingers. So there's a lot of lower level explanations of what appear to be contradictory aspects of the Christian worship of deity.
Gerrit That modern Christians, frankly, I'm actually stunned by the number of Christians, and I mean good believing Christians, great people who really believe, who've never even considered some of these questions. These used to be points of theological debate. Now they are, you know, like I said, explained away by platitudes. Christians want to believe that because Adam fell, that God's perfect creation became horrible. Well, as Thomas Hobbes would say, horrible, nasty, brutish, in short, our lives became that. The problem then goes back to the omnipotence of God. Because Adam didn't trick God. It's not like Adam was playing a shell game with God. God raised the wrong shell. Like, oh, sorry, the whole world's destroyed. What are you going to do about it? Wish you were all powerful. You could probably stop this.
Gerrit Oh, too bad you're not. I mean, God created Adam, knowing that Adam and Eve would fall. Which means that however much a Christian wants to blame everything on Adam and Eve, God created Adam knowing already that Adam and Eve would fall. So it's not like it surprised God. So why didn't God make the consequences of Adam and Eve eating the fruit? Why didn't God make the consequences? Not so horrible. You didn't have to make it so that the entirety of mankind and the world was condemned because Eve said, bite this apple. He could have just wiped it all away because he's God. God created everything. He created the consequences to everything. He could have just condemned Adam and Eve and nobody else.
Gerrit So as you start actually looking deeper into these questions of inequity and suffering in the world, a lot of times our kind of surface level, colloquial little aphorisms that we give each other, they don't really carry a whole lot of weight. Well, you know, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sure. But what if you are, what if your family is tortured and murdered in Auschwitz by Hitler? Good thing that that made me stronger. Yes, on the deathbeds of my children and my wife. I mean, we say things sometimes, hoping that they cover this great question, this great problem of evil, and they don't really cover it. We blame things on agency, and yet agency itself, according to traditional Christian understanding, is created by God.
Gerrit Agency isn't something that self exists. Nothing self exists except for God. So if the only thing that self exists is God, then even the agency that God creates, even the agency that man has, that man uses to destroy themselves, God created that agency and created it knowing that it would lead to horror. Now, Latter-day Saints don't believe that. So if someone's listening right now and they're like, wait a minute, I didn't know that we thought that. I'm telling you what traditional Christians believe. Traditional Christians believe that literally everything that exists, you name something, right? A 66 Dodge Dart, everything. You name anything. Just whatever comes to mind, created by God.
Richard I really feel that Dodge Dart might be the exception.
Gerrit Okay, created by Satan.
Intro By Satan.
Gerrit Richard's always been a Mustang guy. So, but it's not just all of the things are created by God. All of the laws and everything that exists is created by God. So even agency, even when you say, well, you know, God made us free. And because we're free, you know, we have the ability to murder each other. God didn't create agency and then go, Oh my goodness, I can't believe how bad the kids are acting when I'm gone. God created it knowing exactly what would happen. So if God knew that by creating people and then by creating agency among those people, that this world was going to be filled with a horror story of sin and murder and violence and abuse and every kind of depravity, why did God create it?
Gerrit You can see that just simple platitudes, simple clapping on the backs and saying, hey, everything happens for a reason, does not really answer for the things that appear to be completely inequitable. Now that's a discussion for another time, especially as we get more into Joseph Smith's theology. So you're gonna have to keep re-upping that premium till we get there. But why did I start with that discussion? Because I think sometimes Christians today and Latter-day Saints today think that this is easy. They think that understanding God is just easy. Well, of course, I mean, it just all makes sense. I mean, God loves us, and that's why we're here. Okay, well, tell that to someone who's just been starved to death. God loves me so much. He had me suffer most of my life, and then as a 15-year-old starved to death in Ethiopia.
Gerrit Thanks, God. Wonderful doing business with you. This relates back to Marcion and some early heretical groups, because Marcion takes very seriously how horrible this world is. Marcion isn't able to just pretend that the world isn't terrible. He sees the world for what it. How could Jesus have created this world? Can a good God create something that is awful? I mean, by their fruits, you shall know them. If by their fruits, you shall know them, look around you. This world that God created can't sin fast enough.
Gerrit Why didn't God just create a better world? Why didn't he create beings like you and I that weren't so desperately enslaved to sin? He created us out of nothing. So why couldn't he just make us not suck quite as bad? Couldn't he make us somewhat better? Even slightly better, right? I mean, if you're a traditional Christian, the answer to that question has to be, yes, it has to be because God has all power. He can literally do anything and he can make any consequence result from any action. He created the laws. That's difficult for a Latter-day Saint to come to terms with because a Latter-day Saint is thinking in their mind, we know there are certain laws that even God has to obey. Try saying that to a Christian pastor and see what they have to say. There's nothing that God has to do at all. That's the whole point about being God when you're a Christian. And so for a Latter-day Saint, we often will say the words we believe God's all-powerful and then we'll follow it up with things like, well, there are certain laws that even God obeys.
Gerrit Nope, nope. And sorry, you've just failed your Christianity test. That is not how a Christian sees it. So Marcion sees how horrible this world is. And one of the things that seems to be a very stark contrast for Marcion is the Old Testament God certainly does not seem to be Jesus. Right now, Christians, of course, are affirming that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. Right. In fact, Jesus appears to be affirming that. Right. Before Abraham was, I am in John. Right. You know, quoting the what the Lord says from the burning bush to Moses. Right. Tell them that I am a sent you. Marcion makes this argument.
Gerrit Everything that we're dealing with, the difficulties of dealing with the inequities of this world can suddenly be done if we go back to a, now he wouldn't say this, but what he's saying is go back to a pagan premise. In the pagan world, horrible things happened all the time, and nobody lost sleep over why they happened. Of course, they did on individual occasions, but philosophically speaking, people didn't lose sleep over the fact that a whole city is destroyed by an earthquake. That's terrible. That's awful. It's a tragedy. How did it happen? Well, the gods, who are more powerful than us, did it. Now you're thinking, well, that sounds pretty awful, which is literally what everyone thought of the gods. The gods weren't good. The gods were powerful. You didn't worship the gods because they were kind and merciful and just.
Gerrit You worship the gods because they had really big thunder bolts and they would use them if you didn't worship them properly. Frankly, it didn't matter what you believed about the gods. It only mattered that you worshiped them. You could hate Zeus, but if you're sacrificing that goat, that's all that Zeus cares about. So when horrible, inexplicable tragedies happened in the ancient world, nobody lost hope because they simply said, well, obviously Athena beat Hermes in the battle today. And that's the reason why Athens crushed Sparta and everyone was murdered, right? I mean that that that idea is because the gods are all powerful and the gods are fickle and the gods are evil. Essentially, I mean, they're not good. They're certainly not just. They cause all the inequities that happen. But then once Christians come along and they say, not only is God the only God, but that only God is good.
Gerrit Well, now you don't have Athena to blame things on anymore. How can I blame things on Jupiter when Jupiter doesn't exist? Okay, before I became a Christian, when my wheat crop didn't grow, I blame Neptune. Well, I just got converted by Paul, and I now know that Neptune isn't just not the God I worship anymore. Neptune doesn't even exist. There is no Neptune. So why did my wheat crop all die? One of the recurring fundamental problems, and this is honestly a problem in Judaism and Islam as well, in all of the great monotheistic religions, one of the recurring questions that will happen throughout the centuries is, if God is absolutely all-powerful and God is absolutely all-good, which all three monotheistic religions have here, then how is it that everything is so terrible and everything is so unjust?
Gerrit For Marcion, the God that said, kill every single one of the Amalekites, the babies, the animals even, remember what happened with Saul? Saul gets in trouble with God because he didn't thoroughly kill everyone when they took the city. They killed most people. Don't worry, they killed most people. But they kept some of the rams, now ostensibly to sacrifice, right? This is where you get that famous scripture that to obey is better than to sacrifice. And to harken better than the fat of rams. In fact, Saul is going to be removed from his position as king, as a holy man, because he doesn't utterly destroy the enemies of Israel.
Gerrit Marcion saw that and said, the God that says, when someone smites you on the right cheek, turn to him the left one also. The God that says, and he that would compel thee to go with a mile with him, go with him twain. Right? That doesn't seem to be the same God that says, utterly kill all of the children of Ammon. Marcion makes this argument. Like I said, it harkens back to paganism. I think that's the reason why Marcion gets so many followers. Marcionism makes sense. He is going to argue that the God who created this world, the God of the Old Testament, is actually a lesser God. And that lesser God is not kind and loving and merciful and pure.
Gerrit He is just meaning, he's not going to just arbitrarily destroy people, but people are going to be getting destroyed. That's a given. The destruction of people is happening. That's going to happen. But that he's not good and he's a lesser deity and that he created this world. Jesus is a greater God that came to this world to redeem this fallen world. For Marcion, it was belief in Jesus that saved people. It would then probably not surprise you to learn that in fact.
Gerrit He rejected many of, well, it goes without saying that Marcion rejected the Old Testament. I probably didn't even say that. But since he believes that those are the writings and teachings and prophesying of this lesser, well, I don't want to say evil god, but kind of. The god that created this world is a lesser god who is not kind, merciful and just.
Richard So that god may very well have created the Dodge Dart.
Gerrit I would say that Marcion would say that's absolutely what happened. I like to see in my mind Marcion rolling around with a rag top down and pulling up to the line against someone in the dart and saying, are you ready to go? I'm pretty sure my god's better than your god.
Richard So he was either a merchant or the son of a merchant, likely had a little more wealth. That seems to make sense, right?
Gerrit Well, that seems to be how he gets his hearing in Rome, right? He has a lot of money. And so he's going to donate a ton of money to the church in Rome. Now, this is going to come as a surprise to people in the modern world. But in the ancient world, when someone put up a ton of money to a thing, they also got all kinds of influence in that thing. It's a surprising thing. Richard's shaking his head violently. But in the ancient world, that would happen.
Richard Now it's all based on merit or seniority or something other than wealth.
Gerrit No, there's no one today could get a greater say on what happens on some hospital board if they donated $20 million to the hospital. That would not happen today. But in the ancient world, it happened all the time. In fact, I believe that you, in your PhD program, when you go to your football stadium, what's the name of the stadium?
Richard It's the T. Boone Pickens Football Stadium and Complex.
Gerrit Now, did they name it for T. Boone Pickens because he was, you know, an amazing Oklahoma State football coach leading them to multiple national titles?
Richard No, but he was, he loved Oklahoma State. I believe that he may have Beverly Hill billied his way to success in the oil fields.
Gerrit And natural gas as well, yep.
Richard Yes, I believe so.
Gerrit And he gave an handsome sum to the university.
Richard There's a statue of him outside of the stadium as well.
Gerrit Well, look, he gave tens of millions of dollars and paid for the entire stadium.
Richard Yeah, look, our crack research staff is always well behind. As an example, I was just handed this paper from our research staff that said that 30.4% of Maine voted for Ross Perot.
Gerrit Okay, you know what? Our new goal as a podcast is we're going to go to Maine and we're going to find someone who admits that.
Richard First of all, Idaho voted for him with 27%.
Gerrit I know. Well, that's the reason why I know everyone's lying about it because I can't meet anyone. Every person I talked to when I was like, no, I didn't vote for him. Well, really? Because you would have been like 40 at the time that he ran. Yeah, we all knew that would just lead to Bill Clinton being elected. So yeah, we didn't do that.
Richard Yeah. So T. Boone Pickens apparently gave 165 million to Oklahoma State University.
Gerrit So here's a great example. T. Boone Pickens legitimately not a football player, didn't win a bunch of national championships for Oklahoma State, wasn't the founding president of the university, didn't work out some kind of an incredible math equation that became the greatest highlight of Oklahoma State's time. Boone Pickens was a really, really rich guy who gave a whole bunch of money to the university, and now the stadium is named after him. It's not like Lambeau Stadium.
Richard Well, it's actually more than that because the 162 was given in 2006, but throughout his lifetime, Pickens has either given or committed more than 652 million to the university, both for athletics as well as academics.
Gerrit Right. And so the stadium is named after him. And guess who had quite a bit of say on how Oklahoma State did its recruiting and did its programs because if there's that much money coming in, you're going to listen. I mean, look, we all understand that. I mean, it's not going to come as a giant surprise that Phil Knight has something to do with what's going on at Oregon, right? There's no one's going to be like, really? So like, you think that they like, listen to what he has to say? I don't know. Maybe, you know, tens of millions of dollars later, he has something to do with it. This is Marcion in Rome. Now, I don't know how he's not T. Boone Pickens rich, but he's got enough money that he's going to be able to go and give enough of that money that that kind of elevates him in the status of other Christians. Now, look, Marcion is desperately arguing that Jesus is the Messiah. He's desperately saying that we need to worship Jesus.
Gerrit So, I mean, he's it's not like something he's not like running around saying, you know what, I've got some money. Let's go back to worshiping Jupiter. He's he's saying that Jesus is even greater than we thought he was because he's so much greater than the Old Testament God. So Marcion is going to completely reject all of the Old Testament scriptures. Now, the problem is, there's a lot of places in the New Testament that also seem to speak to the Old Testament being authoritative. For Marcion, those things were either changed or they were wrong. The scriptures that are scriptures to Marcion are the letters of Paul. Some of the letters of Paul. Because Paul is saying what? That the law, the imperfect law that you were given, that you could not keep, couldn't ever save you anyway.
Gerrit The only way you ever could have been saved is through faith in Jesus. So Marcion is, you might even call him a follower of Paul. That's really what he is. He is embracing Paul's rejection of the law. And look, Paul writes a lot about the rejection of the law. In part because he's dealing with so many Christian Jews who refuse to, you know, reject or leave behind the aspects of the law. I mean like Sabbath observance the certain way, sacrifice the certain way, meat offerings and drink offerings and the whole nine yards. Many Jews, as we talked about in an earlier episode, they believe that to become a Christian, you have to become Jewish first and then accept Jesus as the Messiah. That's what made you a Christian. Paul rails against that idea.
Gerrit And so many of his writings are, it's not about the law, it's not about the law, because the people he's trying to convince are people who are saying, but I think it kind of is the law. No, it's not the law at all. It's only about faith in Jesus. So Marcion is now making his own canon. It's one thing that he's rejected all of the Old Testament books, but he's also only accepting some of the books that are now in the New Testament. Scholars think that Marcion jump started this really fervent quest to make sure we know what books are accepted and what books aren't as a response to him, because he's saying, yeah, we don't accept, you know, we don't accept the Epistle of James. Yeah, oh, First Corinthians? Yeah, we're all over that. But the other books aren't actually scripture. Sometimes what's used as evidence for this is jump started.
Gerrit Justin Martyr, who is, you know, writing a century before this, does not seem to believe that there is a closed canon of scripture, does not, you know, and so the contrast is, well, after Marcion, suddenly you have people arguing that there should be. For Christians, and you're thinking, well, why are we spending any time on this? Well, remember that the primary argument against Latter-day Saints and against Joseph Smith is going to be that the Bible is finished and complete. It's the only revealed word of God. Therefore, the Book of Mormon can't be the word of God, because if it was the word of God, it would be in the Bible. The problem, of course, with that argument is there wasn't always a Bible. So if the only way you could know the true word of God is by reading the Bible, how did you know the true word of God prior to the mid-fourth century AD?
Gerrit Did those 400 years of Christians, just all of them burn in hell because none of them know the true word of God, because none of them have a Bible? In these different Christian communities, there are multiple books that are circulating. We've made reference to some of them, both on the other podcasts as well as on this one. Some that contained all kinds of fantastical miracles and different accounts of the resurrection, all pushing a different agenda and believed by scholars to be, essentially, pseudepigraphists that are claiming to be written by Thomas, but not written by Thomas. They're claiming to be written by Paul, but not written by Paul, or they're claiming to be written by Peter and not written by Peter. It's not until 367. So think about that. The Nicene Creed is 325. The Council of Nicene is 325.
Gerrit It is not until 367 that we have any record of any Christian leader listing out the actual books of our Bible today as being canonical.
Richard So that's the Easter?
Gerrit The festal letter, yes. Richard, what are you doing on the side over there?
Richard Well, I took the one Institute class. Well, it was an Institute. I took it at BYU. It was a Christian history class. I thought, there you go. It's all coming back to me. So Athanasius, Athanasius sends this out. And this is kind of the first official kind of declaration that these are the books.
Gerrit It's the well, so it would be wrong to say that because Athanasius, who's a bishop in Alexandria, the one that that beat Arian, much like the Great Britain beat France in the Seven Years War. We have to keep reminding people of the horror of the French defeat. Well, so yes, the same Athanasius. That's why Athanasius, I mean, there are a few people in early Christian history whose shadows are very long. One of them is Athanasius. Another is St. Augustine. Those two early Christian theologians will have probably a greater impact on what people believe than just about anyone else. And so not only does Athanasius win the argument about whether God is three and one and one and three or God is individual beings, you know, God and Jesus are separate beings.
Gerrit This same Athanasius in this festal letter, in this Easter letter that he sends to his parishioners, they call it that because you, the whole point of is you're telling them when Easter is going to happen. They don't have like calendars like we do where it's like, Oh, look, it's going to be on the 17th this month. I mean, so the whole point is by saying, you know, Easter is going to be on this day, so you know when to celebrate. But then he also gives counsel. And in this letter, he's going to talk about the canon. He's going to talk about it as being something that people need to believe. Talking about some of these heretics. This is from the letter. They have fabricated books, which they call books of tables, in which they show the stars, to which they give the names of saints, and they're in of a truth. They have inflicted themselves of a double reproach.
Gerrit Those who have written such books because they have perfected themselves in a lying and contemptible science as to the ignorant and the simple, they have led them astray by evil thoughts concerning the right faith established in all truth and upright in the presence of God. So part of what he's saying is there are people that are making claims because of other books that are written, which he sees as evil. But since we have made mention of heretics as dead, but ourselves as possessing the divine scriptures for salvation, and since I fear, lest as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in second Corinthians is what he's quoting, some few of the simple should be beguiled from their simplicity and purity by the subtlety of certain men, and should thenceforth read other books, those called apocryphal, led astray by the similarity of their names with the true books, I beseech you to bear patiently, if I also write by way of remembrance of matters with which you are acquainted, influenced by the need of the advantage of the church.
Gerrit In proceeding to make mention of these things, I shall adopt and commend my undertaking, the pattern of Luke the Evangelist, saying on my own account, for inasmuch as some have taken in hand Luke 1.1, to reduce into the order for themselves the books termed apocryphal, and to mix them up with the divinely inspired scripture concerning which we have been fully persuaded, and they have come from the beginning where eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered to the fathers, it seemed good to me also, having been urged thereunto by true brethren, and having learned from the beginning to set before you the books included in the canon, and handed down and accredited as divine, to the end that anyone who has fallen into error may condemn those who have led him astray, and that he who has continued steadfast in purity may again rejoice having these things brought to his remembrance. So clearly the point of this is there are people that are believing books as scripture that are not really scripture.
Gerrit Because that leads to error, I'm now going to tell you what the books are of scripture. He next lists all of the books of our Old Testament, of the Hebrew Bible. Okay, so that we don't need to list all those off because those are very well known. But then he says, again, it is not tedious to speak of the New Testament, the books of the New Testament. These are the four gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Afterwards, the Acts of the Apostles and Epistles, seven, namely James 1, Peter 2, John 3, after these, one of Jude. In addition, there are 14 Epistles of Paul, written in this order. To the Romans, two to the Corinthians, after these to the Galatians, next to the Ephesians, then to the Philippians, then to the Colossians, and these two to the Thessalonians, and that to the Hebrews.
Gerrit And again, two to Timothy, one to Titus, and lastly, that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation of John. So that's the Book of Revelation. So here you have a list of all of the books and just all of our books that are listed as Scripture. So it's not all of these books plus, you know, another book that was widely accepted as Scripture in the early Christian world, quoted by some of the early Christian fathers, was a book called The Shepherd of Hermas. The Shepherd of Hermas is a very lengthy book in which this, you know, Hermas has this vision and is taught things, you know, by Jesus. There's nothing heretical in this book. It's not something that, you know, Christians are going to say, well, wait a minute, is this some kind of Gnostic garbage? They teach from it. They believe in it. It's, it's, it's sound, but they, they decide that eventually the decision, it's not going to be scripture.
Gerrit Why? Because well, Hermas isn't an apostle or a companion of the apostles. That comes to be the way that we set it down. In order for something to become scripture, it can't just be really good. It has to be something written by one of the apostles or one of the companions of the apostles. Because you might be saying, as I list off my apostles in my mind, I don't recall seeing Mark there. Well, that's because Mark is traditionally believed to be the secretary of Peter. So he's Peter's disciple. Luke is traditionally considered to be Paul's disciple. So these gospels, even though not written by an apostle, are reputed to be written by someone who is a companion of the apostles.
Richard Well, so wouldn't Luke be a companion to Paul, put his gospel with a little more skepticism, given that he wouldn't have been there for any of the. Things that he wrote about?
Intro I mean, in the book of Luke, Acts, obviously.
Gerrit Someone could make that argument. Now, of course, that would, you know, then by contrast, you'd say, but he really knows about everything that's going on in Acts, though, right?
Intro Well, sure, sure.
Gerrit Of course, the writer of Luke and Acts never calls himself Luke. It is later accredited to be the gospel according to Luke. And so that is, I mean, it's a great question. But when it was first being circulated, it was being circulated anonymously. So no one would have questioned that gospel because it wasn't circulated with a name. It later has attributed to it a name. Now, very well, Luke could have been the one who wrote it. I mean, we still call it the gospel according to Luke. That's not in the original manuscript, though. That's something that's added later when people are trying to give it apostolic cretins.
Richard Were there any of the books or, I mean, any of the acts or any of the gospels that are maybe a little more looked down upon or any of the books that made it in by the skin of their teeth, like a James or a second Peter or something?
Gerrit I mean, so, you know, the book of Hebrews is contested pretty widely because it's anonymous and only later is going to start being attributed to Paul. And so once it's attributed to Paul, then it's going to start gaining ground. The book of James is in and it's out. The first and second Timothy are not always in every list. And so here's the problem. Even though we just read this letter here from Athanasius, as powerful as Athanasius is, he's just a bishop of Alexandria, which is a power. Look, that's one of the most powerful places in the early Christian church is Egypt. But it's not Rome. It's not Carthage. It's not, you know, all of Asia Minor. It's not Jerusalem. It's just one area where this letter is being sent out. And so it would be a mistake to say, oh, yes, as soon as Athanasius put pen to paper, everyone started burning their heretical books.
Gerrit And we, you know, the Bible plopped down in front of everybody.
Richard Well, they saw what he did to Arius. And they're like, all right, you know what? Hey, you know what?
Gerrit We can't win this. The next thing you know, he'll get the emperor involved. But this is so this is not to say that in 367, everyone agreed exactly what all the Gospels were, what the canon of scripture was. It's to say that until 367, there is no other extant document. Maybe there was a document written by someone somewhere that we just don't have. It doesn't exist anymore. But until 367, no one had listed all of the books of our current Bible and said, these are the only books that are scripture. People had said that, you know, first Corinthians is scripture, but then didn't include all of the other books, right? I mean, so this is the first time that you have a canon that is what is today in your Bible. And that's not a settled thing. This is just him writing to his parishioners. In fact, you'll go on to say about these books.
Gerrit These are fountains of salvation that they who thirst may be satisfied by the living words that they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these. So I would guess that several Latter-day Saints listening to me may have had someone say to them from the Apocalypse of John, often referred to as the Book of Revelation, that if anyone adds to or takes away from the words of this book, let him be accursed, right? It's not just something that's being said by the evangelical Christian that you met in California a couple of decades ago. It's from the beginning, Athanasius is making this argument. These are the books that, frankly, I have decided are scripture.
Gerrit And if anyone says that there are any other books, or if anyone says that one of these books isn't scripture, then they are heretics. And notice again, in these alone, is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. So if you want to believe something else, you can believe it, but it's of some different level. Now, of course, he's also going to include some other books in his letter that, you know, much to the consternation of later Protestants. But for greater exactness, I add this also, writing of necessity, that there are other books besides these, not indeed included in the canon, but appointed by the fathers to be read by those who newly join us and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness, the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of Sirach, Esther and Judith and Tobit, and that which is called the teachings of the Apostles and the Shepherd.
Gerrit Notice the Shepherd of Hermes. But the former, my brethren, are included in the canon, the latter merely being read. Nor is there any place of mention of apocryphal writings, but they are the invention of heretics who write them when they choose bestowing upon them their approbation and assigning them a date that so using them as ancient writings, they may find occasion to lead astray the simple. So he's going to reference, look, there's other books. In fact, many of those books are from the Jewish apocrypha, from the Old Testament apocrypha, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, right? And those books are in circulation. I mean, these become really problematic for early Christians because these books are not part of the New Testament canon, right? So they are not, I mean, sort of the Old Testament canon. They aren't part of the Hebrew Bible, the books of the apocrypha, if you've heard of the apocrypha.
Gerrit They're not part of the Hebrew Bible, but they are in circulation in Jesus' time. These are like the Book of the Maccabees that talk about Hanukkah and everything. And they are included in the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible that's in circulation in Jesus' time. So early Christians have to come to this determination. These books weren't part of the Hebrew Bible. They were written later, but they were in the scriptures that were in circulation in Jesus' time when Jesus is saying the scriptures are from God. So does that include these apocryphal books? And that argument is going to go back and forth over and over and over. It'll become especially important for a doctrine that we're going to talk about later, but not today, the doctrine of purgatory.
Gerrit Because the primary argument for the existence of purgatory, or at least scriptural foundation of it, is going to come from one of those apocryphal books. Nevertheless, when Jerome is going to start piecing together his Bible, he is going to use that same list that Athanasius has already set for.
Richard So are there certain councils then that codify what Athanasius says that says, okay, hey, this bishop said this, but moving forward, I mean, you have Jerome doing it, but is there some sort of council that agrees upon this and moves forward?
Gerrit Not immediately, no, actually. I mean, the canon forms more kind of naturalistically, and then once it's already the canon, anyone who's claiming that they have something that's outside of it, they are anathematized. And that's why Jerome really is a big deal, because Jerome is going to take the various Greek versions that are in circulation of the New Testament. I mean, again, there's no New Testament, but of these different books that are circulating listed by Athanasius, Jerome is doing this roughly 20 years after Athanasius. He's commissioned by the Pope to translate these Greek books into Latin, which is, of course, you know, he's in Rome, so it's the language of the empire.
Gerrit And that production is going to come to be called the Vulgate, the Latin Vulgate. The Vulgate is the Bible with few modifications that is still being used by the Catholic Church today. And it includes the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the books of the Apocrypha that are these books that were written or that were in circulation after the end of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible, but had been accepted as somewhat authoritative and were in circulation in Jesus' time and were in fact included in the Greek version, which was in circulation in Jesus' time, of the Hebrew Bible. So the Catholic Bible even today contains the book of 1 and 2 Maccabees and Bell and the Dragon.
Gerrit The Catholic Bible contains those as scripture, whereas you will find nearly all Protestant Bibles do not. Now that's a story for another time, but it is still the reality. Why does it matter to find out how it is that the canon comes together? As I said earlier in the podcast, most Christians believe that the Bible almost spontaneously combusted, that Jesus said, all right, I'm ascending to heaven now. And in the wake of him going up to the cloud, piercing the cloud came, dropping through the cloud work was a Bible that plopped onto the ground. Oh, hey, look, here's the letters of Paul. He hasn't even written them yet. They don't know that it took hundreds of years for even the first Christian, Athanasius, to list all of the books that are in the Bible in a single letter, let alone for all of the others to no longer be accepted or for the ones that were excluded to be brought back in.
Gerrit Christians pride themselves on the canon being closed, but it is a truth of history that for nearly the first 400 years of Christianity, there was no Bible and there was no closed canon. Now, a Christian could say today, they could look back after the fact and say, yeah, but we always knew that Timothy was going to be scripture because we just knew it because it was. It doesn't change the fact that in 200 AD, that isn't the canon. In fact, some scholars are actually very stunned that Justin Martyr, who is this theologian in the early church, he doesn't ever, ever quote Paul. Why doesn't he quote Paul? Paul's writings are ubiquitous in Christianity by the second century.
Gerrit Why doesn't Justin ever quote him? We don't really know. He quotes other, he quotes Gospels, but he doesn't quote Paul in all of his writings. The reality is the Bible as it came to be, was something that was a centuries-long process. Now look, a Christian will say yes, but God guided that process, and God ensured that in the end of the day, all of the things that needed to be included would be included, which I say is entirely possible, because we believe that God works miracles. The problem is the same person who wants me to believe that God over the course of centuries could have guided the hand to make sure that the Bible was exactly what it was supposed to be is literally the same person who says that God couldn't have had prophets in the Americas who recorded what they knew about Jesus and that Joseph Smith was guided to translate those.
Gerrit It's a very interesting, incredibly powerful God who's also incredibly limited. He's so powerful that he's guiding things behind the scenes over the course of four centuries to make sure we end up with the Bible we're supposed to have. Sorry, you early Christians who are going to go to hell because you didn't have the right Bible, but doesn't have the ability to guide other scriptures to come forth. I mean, Athanasius is trying to refute heresy when he says, and if anyone says that there's any other scriptures that are scripture of their heretics, well, just because Athanasius said that doesn't make that scripture, does it? I mean, think of the great irony of saying that the only thing that is true about God has to be written by one of the apostles or one of the companions of the apostles, and yet the argument that nothing else can be added to the Bible comes from Athanasius living at least 250 years after the last apostle, right?
Gerrit So there's a great contradiction in the Christian insistence that the canon is closed. This closing of the canon is something that develops over the course of time. This is not something that developed immediately. Hundreds of years go by. I mean, the United States has not been a country as long as it took Christians to develop what is today the Bible. In fact, another hundred years would have to go by before the United States would be as old as Christianity was before there was a Bible. And that is something food for thought to keep in mind. So we will next talk about some of the theological productions of the Middle Ages. Again, we literally can't cover them all. We legitimately can't.
Gerrit We're just going to cover a couple that will lead to the Reformation eventually, because the Reformation is so key to Joseph Smith's first question. Thank you so much.
Intro Thank you for listening to Joseph Smith and the Restoration, a Standard of Truth podcast production. Please join us for our next episode. For our other productions, please visit standardoftruth.com.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

Now, I do no research. That is obvious for anyone that listens to the podcast.

RichardBanter

What do we do with both heretics and their books? We like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We burn them anyway.

GerritBanter

I really feel that Dodge Dart might be the exception.

RichardBanter

So why couldn't he just make us not suck quite as bad?

GerritBanter

You worship the gods because they had really big thunder bolts and they would use them if you didn't worship them properly.

GerritBanter

Now it's all based on merit or seniority or something other than wealth.

RichardBanter

The problem, of course, with that argument is there wasn't always a Bible.

GerritInsight

Christians pride themselves on the canon being closed, but it is a truth of history that for nearly the first 400 years of Christianity, there was no Bible and there was no closed canon.

GerritInsight

It's a very interesting, incredibly powerful God who's also incredibly limited.

GerritInsight

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
The Bible came down essentially complete right after Jesus ascended.
The canon is closed, so the Book of Mormon can't be scripture.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

The New Testament took centuries to settle. Athanasius's Easter letter of 367 is the first known list of exactly our 27 books.

Marcion couldn't reconcile a good God with a harsh world, so he threw out the Old Testament; the church's response helped push it to define the canon.

Books like the Shepherd of Hermas were widely read but left out because they weren't by an apostle or an apostle's companion.

When someone says the canon is closed, remember that the first Christians had no closed canon, and God can still bring forth scripture.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Sheep or scripture?Richard's rejected pitch on New Zealand wool, carbon farming and the international wool trade (0:00, 2:14).
Richard and the sports bettingCollingwood sits fifth; Richard is "extremely confident" he picked Sydney as his dark horse (2:14).
Richard and the missionariesMission call season replays, free premium with a mission email to questions@standardoftruthpodcast.com (1:13).
Nobody voted for Ross PerotNobody admits voting for Ross Perot, not in Idaho (27 percent) or Maine (30.4 percent) (5:51, 33:18).
The Dodge DartCreated by Satan, or by Marcion's lesser god; Richard's always been a Mustang guy (18:26, 30:44).
Oklahoma StateT. Boone Pickens Stadium and $652 million in gifts (32:28).
The crack research staffHands Richard Ross Perot's vote share in Maine, well behind as usual (33:18).
Richard and history datesAthanasius beat Arius like Great Britain beat France in the Seven Years' War (42:09).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Read Athanasius's 39th Festal Letter in full, including the books to be read but not counted as canon (54:38).
Marcion and the first canon, and why scholars think he spurred the church to define its own (38:11).
The Shepherd of Hermas, a widely read early Christian book that didn't make it in (47:32).
The Septuagint, the Apocrypha, and why Catholic and Protestant Bibles still differ (56:48).
The problem of evil and why Gerrit says Joseph Smith's theology answers it differently, coming in later episodes (19:45).
SOT Litner · S4E22.