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So far today, we have considered the Old Testament, the languages in which it was originally written, Hebrew and Aramaic, its early translation into Greek in the third century BC. From dealing with the text of the Old Testament, we turned to the questions of revelation, inspiration, authority, and infallibility. Now we come to the question of the canon of the Old Testament. How many books are there? How many books should there be in the Old Testament? This is a matter over which the Orthodox Jews themselves have never been in any doubt. The doubt and discussions have arisen in the Christian eras, in the Christian era and amongst Christians, not amongst Orthodox Jews. So let's put down the books, uh, make a list of them here, the books in the Hebrew canon. We will notice that in the Hebrew Bible, there are three divisions in the Old Testament canon. The first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch, are referred to in Hebrew by the word Torah, though the word is translated in English, the law, generally speaking. In the scripture, the word law does refer to the law given at Sinai, or the law equals the Pentateuch, or the law referring to the whole Old Testament. But in the Jewish canon, the first five books are referred to as the law, Torah. The word Pentateuch, of course, is Greek, meaning five volumes. Then there come the prophets. It is to be noticed that some of the historical books are included in that second group, the prophets. Joshua, Judges, but not Ruth. Samuel, Kings, but not Chronicles. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Hab- Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, but not Daniel. And not the historical books, uh, of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Those books come in the third division, called the writings, Kethuvim. Cthufim. Or they tend in English nowadays to be called the Hagiographa, means the holy writings. It raises interesting questions, of course. Why was not Daniel put among the prophets? The Lord Jesus himself refers to Daniel the prophet. Why was Chronicles put in the third division and not along with the historical books? Uh, Josie, uh, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, why not Chronicles? Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther there. We can come to that in a moment. The third division called the writings by the Jews, Kuthuvim. So to this present day, if you were offering a- an Old Testament to a Jew, an Orthodox Jew, you wouldn't refer to it as the Old Testament. He doesn't like the term old, of course. Uh, you would refer to it in the Jewish way. And nowadays they take the initial letters of the term the law, Torah, a T, and the initial letters of the prophets, Nevi'im, N, and the initials of the writings, Kethuvim, and they put them together to make one word, and they ca- they they call it the Tanakh. The Tanakh. In the Christian Bible, as I've called it here, meaning the order of books found, of the Old Testament books found in most Christian Bibles. You have the Pentateuch the exact same as the Hebrew. But now in the Christian Bible, Ruth and Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, all precede the three major prophets, or the four major prophets, if you like, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The other prophets, generally referred to as the minor prophets, come at the end. Now, curiously, we owe that ordering in great part to the Septuagint and not to the Hebrew. The names of the books, in part we owe to, uh, the Septuagint likewise. For instance, take the book of Numbers. You'll see, uh, the name comes into English from the title of the book in the Septuagint. In the Sept- Septuagint, it is called, labeled Arithmoi, meaning numbers. Do you see. Uh, whereas in Hebrew, the na- the book is called by the first word in the book, uh, bemidbar, which means in the desert. Deuteronomy, in Hebrew, the name of the book is Eje Devarim, these are the words which, and they are the first words in Hebrew of the fifth book of the Torah. These are the words which Moses proclaimed, you see. The name Deuteronomy actually means a second law. Deutero, second, nomi from the, uh, Greek word nomos. Deuteronomy, it means the second law, and is the name of the book in English, following the Greek. The title is a, a, a misunderstanding. What the, uh, phrases in the Old Testament is a repetition of the law, not a second law. It is a repetition of the law, mistranslated into the Greek as a second law. Hence the title Deuteronomy, which, strictly speaking, if people knew the name, the meaning of the name a second law, is not right. Don't tell people that you learned that here, they will regard me more as a heretic than I already do regard me, you'll see, but that is how it is, you'll see. What matters the labels. Tables. The question is, when was the canon complete? The liberal view is, by and large, that the canon was compiled, the Hebrew canon compiled, virtually in the, uh, as they were written, so to speak. That the third division was not finally compiled until, say, about the second century AD, or perhaps at Jamnia, the Council of Jamnia, around about ninety AD. The conservative view put in that book by Beckwith, the New- the Old Testament canon in the New Testament church is that the law part was settled, finalized, uh, early on, recognized by the Jews as authoritative, with the general authority of Moses, but that the second and third divisions were finally settled around about the time of the Maccabees, and were settled largely on the account of contents. Psalms. Psalms, being a very large book, of course, but rather different from what has gone before, is put first in the third division, because in many senses it was regarded as the most important book in the third division. Chronicles comes last, even after Ezra and Nehemiah. Because it's not only a long book, but it was written after the exile. After the Jews came back from Babylon. Unlike the books of Samuel, King and Kings, Chronicles is a survey of world history, or at least of the Jewish history, from the time of Adam, the very beginning, First Chronicles chapter one verse one starts with Adam, traces the rise of some of the Gentile nations, and then the rise of Israel out of the nations, and ends up after the exile. It's written in years after the exile, when Israel had returned. And hence, because it is a, so to speak, a summary. It is placed last. Suggestion is that Daniel is there because, while he was a prophet, and our Lord said he was a prophet, of course. A great deal of Daniel is not prophecy, but history, stories. And so forth and so on. As to the threefold division. We looked at it last time, let us revive our memories. The Lord himself referred to the three divisions. Luke chapter twenty four and verse forty four. And he said at them, said unto them, these are my words which I spoke unto you while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. The threefold division, the prophets, as you see. You notice that in the prophets you have a number of historical books, Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. They are called generally the former prophets, as distinct from the latter prophets, the later prophets, you'll see. Daniel is not placed among the major prophets, because presumably, because a lot of his material is straightforward stories. Chapter one is. Chapter two is what happened to him and his three young gentlemen in, in the, in the university in Babylon. The story of the, uh, young men put in the furnace, chapter three. The story about Nebuchadnezzar and the tree being cut down. The story of Daniel thrown into the den of lions. So a lot of it is stories, as well as other chapters which are plain prophecy. There are a lot more things that we could, uh, mention about the, the, uh, canon as it stands, but we must move on now to the, uh, disputed matter, the books of the Apocrypha. As I said, the The Jews Jews. are clear to this day, particularly Orthodox Jews, they have no dispute about the Old Testament canon. The dispute arose mainly in Christian times. So here are a list of the books that now, uh, uh, compile the Apocrypha. First book of Esdras, the second book of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the additions to the book of Esther, the wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, to be distinguished from Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is a name of the book in the Hebrew canon. Ecclesiasticus is not the same, it's the name of another book, alternatively called the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. Baruch, the name is the name of, uh, Jeremiah's secretary. The letter of Jeremiah, the prayer of Azariah, and the song of the three young men. Ah, but that's supposed to be the three young men, uh, who were thrown into the furnace a lot, uh, you know, for refusing to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's statue. Susanna and the Elders, Belle and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasseh, the First Book of Maccabees, and the Second Book of Maccabe- Maccabees. They are a mixed bag, gentlemen. Among them are serious, or meant to be serious, historical works. The First Book of Maccabees and the Second Book of Maccabees. They are important historical works. The First Book of Maccabees sets out to be a plain factual account of the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes in the years one hundred and sixty six, uh, seven to one hundred and sixty four particularly, and the way the Maccabees rose up in defiance and rebellion against them, and by dint of, uh, guerrilla warfare, eventually gained freedom for Israel. And one of the successors of the Maccabee eventually restored the territory to Israel almost as completely as it had been under David. You'll see. They were great heroes. It is to be said that when Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews, desecrated the temple, put an idol of Baal into the temple, sacrificed a pig on the altar, forbade possession of the Old Testament scriptures, forbade the practice of circumcision, and so forth and so on. It is the fact that the high priests compromised with Antiochus Epiphanes. They were all for turning Jerusalem into a Hellenistic city, which brought them benefits of education, Greek education, and the benefits of commerce. They compromised, and they were happy to say that doesn't matter what you call God. Hebrews call him Yahweh, well, others call him Baal, some other people call him On or Os- Osiris, you see? Doesn't matter what you call him, it's all the same really. Tony Blair would have been pleased with that, do you see? Uh, do you see? And so would the modern movement. The Maccabees rose up against Antiochus Epiphanes and against the high priests. And stood for the uniqueness of the Old Testament, God's Old Testament revelation to Israel. And for monotheism, that God was the only true God. You see. The weapons by which they fought were, as Paul would describe them, carnal weapons by literal warfare. And alas, throughout Christendom, many claiming to be Christians have followed their example and attempted to use literal force of literal armies to stand for the faith, with what disaster we know, we know, know, of course. Uh, these men were not Christian in our modern sense. They were ancient Jews. So Maccabees, first book of Maccabees sets out to be, uh, history. It is in fact one of the few sources of history that we have in the ancient world for that period o- of the Jewish nation. It is therefore a- an important book. That is not to say it is everywhere reliable, but it is an important book. It is also an interesting book because it's the first book in which the term the abomination of desolation is mentioned. That phrase first occurs, as far as we know, i- i- i- in, uh, in Greek, in, uh, the, uh, book of Maccabees. It comes, of course, from Daniel, but it is mentioned in Greek in the book of Maccabees, describing that same, uh, i- uh, situation that Daniel prophesied of. Our Lord himself also referred to the abomination spoken of by Daniel the prophet. In other words, Maccabees gives you some historical description of what that involved, what that persecution and the abomination of desolation involved. Second Maccabees is a, a, a, a com- is a, is a miniature, so to speak. It's a summary of, um, of larger work. It goes over the same period. It is full of so-called miraculous and incredible things, do you see? But nowadays, some historians regard elements in it as even more reliable history than First Maccabees. It's a thing worth reading, gentlemen, if you want to fill in that period of history, to know what happened when Antiochus Epiphanes set up the abomination of desolation. Then there are books that, uh, show what was a common habit in the ancient world. Take, for instance, the prayer of Azariah and the song of the three young men. Daniel, the canonical book, tells you that these three young men refused to abandon, uh, the faith. They refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's image. They got thrown in the fire. And of course, they were delivered, and they praised the Lord. So, I suppose it, it charmed away an odd afternoon of a Sabbath, you see. People wrote what they imagined the, the song of praise they sang, you see, filled it in, made a book of it, you see. It is, of course, imaginary. It is not canonical, it is not historically based. It is somebody imagining what the young men might have said. Take the additions to the book of Esther. The book of Esther as we have it, eh, in the Hebrew canon doesn't even mention the name of God anywhere. In the Septuagint, the thing has been enlarged. Several sections have been interleaved in it. Of course, in those, God is mentioned. And the effect of the additions throughout different parts throughout the book is to turn the book into a historical novel, you'll see. So they are the additions to the book of Esther. They are apocryphal. Then there are stories like Judith, for instance. She was an old battle axe, was Judith. Mm-hmm. Ha ha. Do you see? Ha. When Israel was being, uh, besieged by a wicked king, Judas, in the end, saw a way of delivering Israel. So she dressed up as a woman of no very great virtue and went across to the tent of this wicked king whose armies were besieging Israel. And with feminine guile and all that, and charm, she got herself into the emperor's tent, you'll see. And, uh, so behaved as the emperor thought he had a great opportunity. So she lulled him to sleep, feeding him a bit too much alcohol, I suspect, and other such stuff. And when he slept, she drew out a sword, cut his head off, without compromising her virtue with the wicked king at all, and brought his head back in triumph to the Israelites, which perhaps some people felt was an improvement on the story of Esther. Because if you listen to the story of Esther, she joined the, uh, kings, the emperors harim, did she not? And then again, the emperor's favorite wife, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. What would Orthodox Judaism make of that, I wonder, do you see? So Judas was a considerable improvement, according to some people, on, uh, the, uh, behavior of Esther. The wisdom book, book of wisdom, is, uh, moralistic, full of morals. Ecclesiasticus is a book of proverbial statements, very much like the book of Proverbs. So much so, if I stood up in a congregation and said, I would like to read before you now, just read a passage, and without telling you where I got it from, I read Ecclesiasticus, I could guarantee that a good many of the dear believers wouldn't, uh, throw me out. They would think it was Proverbs I was reading from, you see. There's no harm in it, except it wasn't inspired. So the Apocrypha is a mixed bag of stories. First Book of Esdras, Second Book of Esdras, well, it defeats me. I could never keep it in mind. Uh, uh, one of which is, uh, the Greek translation of the Book of Ezra, w- uh, and bits of Nehemiah in it. And the other one is, uh, part of that, but part of a lot of legend as well. I d- I despair of ever getting my memory to remember what is what in these various books of, uh, Esdras, so-called in Greek. Never mind anyway, they are to be distinguished from the canonical book of Ezra and the canonical book of Nehemiah. It remains to be said that in some of the very big Greek manuscripts of the Christian period, like Alexandrinus A and uh, Vaticanus B and things like that, which contain not only the New Testament but the Old Testament. They have many of these apocryphal books. They have additional books that are not in the strictly so-called Apocrypha. They have a third book of Maccabees and a fourth book of Maccabees. And then they have some books, uh, that are straightforward philosophy. Many of, some of these books existed first in Hebrew and then were translated into Greek. Some never did exist in Hebrew, but were written in Greek from the word go. You see. As I say, the Orthodox Jews have never accepted any of those books as belonging to the Hebrew canon of scripture. The inclusion of them as As canon... canon. dates from the Christian period. And came about, doubtless, for a simple reason, originally simple. On the table here, I have showed you a photograph of a very, very ancient scroll of Leviticus, or at least the fragments of it that have remained, and you see the nature of a scroll. That is to be distinguished from manuscripts which we have that are in codex form. A codex is a book in English, like that, written as distinct from being written on a scroll. All the Jewish holy books were written on scrolls, and the Torah as read in the synagogues to this day is written on a scroll, not in book form. Though, of course, Jews studied it in book form, but in the synagogue services, it's a scroll that they read from. The early Christians, however, began to use the codex form, both for the New Testament and then for the Old Testament. One, it was cheaper, and two, you can get much more in a codex than you can in a scroll, so it's e- easier to carry around. But of course, when people were in the beginning putting these books into, uh, a codex form, the scrolls, taking them from scrolls and putting them into codex form. They would have, some people would have, many other books. Like, I suppose, if I came to your library, gentlemen, I might find on your library shelf, aha, a, a, a copy of the authorized version. Mm-hmm. And I might then find a copy, who knows, of the NIV. And even a message, The Message. And then, uh, do you see, uh, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Very much improving literature, you see, and a gospel hymn book. And, uh, do you see, uh, sundry books, who knows by whom, do you see? What would that imply, that I saw all those books t- standing together on your shelf? That you regarded them all as inspired authoritative Bible? Because they stood together. Well, I think not, perhaps. You'll see. So the ancients would have had in there, they called the thing a screnium. It was like a big tin tin box. They had all sorts of scrolls in it. When they came to put them into codices, into a codex form, then naturally, all sorts of books got added into the codex form. Now we have evidence early on, that, uh, for instance, in the early churches in Egypt, they began to put together the epistles of Paul into one codex. But as time went on, it would have been natural for people that had Greek translations of the Old Testament, because they couldn't read Hebrew, and a lot of other Greek books of a religious nature. It would have been natural for them in the third, second, third, fourth, fifth centuries to put them all in codex form. And so these books came, particularly to Greek-speaking people. Mm-hmm. And among Greek-speaking Christians, the status of these apocryphal books eventually came to be debated. We have historical accounts of the debate that arose in the fourth century onwards, and notably the debate between Saint Augustine of North Africa and Saint Jerome, who then lived in Bethlehem. The Old Testament had come to North Africa, translated into Latin from the Greek, not from the Hebrew. And the books that they then had included a lot of these apocryphal books. They were therefore translated into Latin, many of them, along with the canonical books, and accepted by people like Saint Augustine as being truly biblical, part of the Bible. Then Jerome was asked by the Pope to revise the old Latin translation of these books, because the Latin translation by that time was in a tremendous muddle and confusion. Many people had tried to improve it, revise it, so you didn't know tither from which. Jerome set about doing it, but he was unusual in that by that time very few Christians knew any Hebrew. Augustine knew no Hebrew. Doubtful how much Greek he knew, but he certainly didn't know Hebrew. Augustine didn't. But Jerome had trouble to learn Hebrew. He lived in Palestine. And when he came to revise the old Latin translation of the Greek Old Testament, he saw at once how much of it in these books, and even within the canonical books, was not in the Hebrew. It wasn't part of the canon in Hebrew. And he noticed, of course, in parts in the Greek translation, there were things in the Hebrew that weren't in the Greek. And being a fine scholar, he set about the work and wanted to e- uh, exclude anything that wasn't in the Hebrew canon. And to put into the, uh, revised Latin version all that was in the Hebrew canon, even those bits that the Greek translations had omitted. That was Jerome, working on the, uh, ancient Hebrew, taught by the rabbis of the time, what was canonical, regarded as canonical by the Jews. And hence began a very big dispute between Jerome and Augustine. I mustn't weary you now with the details of that dispute. If you are interested in it, that little thing, the lecture that I gave, and you may have a copy if you wish, discusses that argument between Jerome and Saint Augustine. Where Augustine reprimands Jerome and asks him who he thought he was. Just one man standing up against the seventy who translated the Hebrew into Greek. And what's more, says Augustine, those seventy men were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Who are you, Jerome, to dare stand up on your hind legs and reject what the seventy men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, told us was the word of God, was the Old Testament? Sounds a familiar argument, but... Augustine was misled, wasn't he, by the legends that had arisen over the translation of the Hebrew into Greek. The earliest tradition, legend though it might be in many parts, doesn't claim that the men were inspired by the Holy Spirit. It says they came to an agreement on the translation by consulting one with another. It was later people like Epiphanius and other such who claimed that the translators were inspired. And they claimed also, not only were they inspired, but the Greek is an absolutely exact, geometrically exact translation of the Hebrew. Anybody that would write such a sentence shows he doesn't know any Hebrew. Because the Greek is far from being an exact translation of the Hebrew in many places. So you got the dispute between Augustine and Jerome. The Latin translation of the Old Testament that Jerome produced came to be called the Vulgate and was regarded for centuries as the official Bible, Old Testament of the Catholic Church. When the Council of Trent took place, in fifteen hundreds odd, the question came before the council. And of course, the arguments raged on both sides, the Augustine view or the Jerome view, which would you accept? For Jerome had translated some of those apocryphal books, but he wouldn't regard them as authoritative scripture. So what were they to do? In the end, the Council of Trent did the splits, so to speak. It recognized the Hebrew canon, do you see? Then it added on the apocryphal books at the end. Curiously enough, in doing the splits, the Vulgate, and to this present day it's true, the Vulgate put the additions to Esther, do you see it up there, the additions to the book of Esther, the apocryphal additions. Do you see those additions Jerome had taken out of the book of Esther. If this is the book of Esther with its additions, then Jerome took the additions out. Do you see, and left the canonical book. So the Vulgate put the canonical book of Es- Exed, uh, of Esther where it should be in the canon, took the additions out and put them in the Apocrypha, where, gentlemen, you will see they make no sense. Because they were not just added on to the end of the canonical Esther, they were interleaved. One bit was put in here, there was a bit put to introduce the thing, there was another book put it, piece put in there. All in the context to make a, a running story, but a very much a romantically added to story. If you took the bits out of their context, they don't make any sense. They still stand like that in the official Vulgate at the end of the Old Testament as the additions to Exodus. Witness of the great dispute, do you see, eh, in the Council of Trent. The history of what happened in England, so to speak, is well recounted in Bruce's The Books and the Parchments, if you care to read it. I must not tax your patience too much. In the Orthodox Church, however, as distinct from the Catholic Church, they are founded on the early councils of the church, Nicaea, and so forth and so on. To them, the Council of Trent is a, a, a, is anathema, actually, I don't regard it at all. They are based on the old councils, the ecumenical councils, when the church was not divided between East and West. Hence, none of those councils pronounced on what books were apocryphal and what weren't. So the Orthodox Church has no official view on it, but normally goes with the Greek and adds the apocryphal books in. Uh-huh. We who work a little bit in Orthodox countries like Russia and uh, and uh, western Ukraine, you see, have to observe these things are so with them. Luther, he tended to include the apocryphal books. So did the Westminster Confession of sixteen forty seven. See the sixteen eleven Authorized Version added the apocryphal books. It was only later that people rose up and said these apocryphal books are not canonical. You will find the prayer book of the Church of England, if I am not mistaken, makes a distinguish- distinction between books that are to be read in church and apocryphal books that are good, edifying, spiritual reading, but not to be read authoritatively in the churches. You'll see. And hence the apocryphal books are sometimes, as I say, printed along with the authorized version. Though Cranmer's prayer book will make the distinction between them. Canonical books to be read authoritatively in church. Apocryphal books to be read as interesting and profitable reading, but not authority in matters of doctrine. You see. By and large, evangelicals then, uh, insisted that the book, uh, translation in English be read by itself without including the apocryphal books. More recent years, and these, this is why we need to know about it. In more recent years, the Bible societies have gone back on that decision that they took. They are prepared to give you a Bible that contains the Apocrypha if you want it, or if you don't want the Apocrypha, to give you a Bible that doesn't contain the Apocrypha. The Catholic, the modern Catholic scholars will not call those books apocryphal books. They tend to call them deuterocanonical books. Canonical, but of the second grade, so to speak. I doubt whether the Council of Trent would have agreed with them, but that is the modern view of many Catholic scholars. They won't call them apocryphal, not all of them at least. They will call them deuterocanonical. But to come right up to date, there is a very big move in the scholarly world to now assert that the Septuagint, including these apocryphal books, is the Bible of the church, not the Hebrew canon. Of course, Catholics hold that view still, and one of their number, the late Dominick Barthelemy, put it this way. You'll see God gave the Hebrew canon to the Jews. But then, when the Septuagint was translated, it was the Hebra- it was the Holy Spirit reinterpreting the Old Testament for the church. And while it is an interesting scholarly thing to interest yourself in the Hebrew Old Testament, and what is its original text, that's a wild goose chase, he says. And even if you could do it, it would deliver you bound hand and foot on the doorstep of the rabbis, and we don't want that, do we? In the Septuagint, we have the Old Testament reinterpreted for the church, and this is the church's Bible. As I say, many Protestants now and some evangelicals are going over to that view, that the church's Old Testament should be the Septuagint. Why should we bother about it? Well, one big answer is to go back to Christ and what did he regard as the Bible, the Old Testament. And as we have seen, he referred to the Old Testament, the canonical books, in their three divisions, and cited them as God's word. Our Lord is nowhere on record of having quoted the Apocrypha. Nor would the Jews to this day agree to this, these books being part of their holy scripture. Some of the books written for the first time in Greek and never were in Hebrew. You're not going to get any Orthodox Jew agreeing that they were part of the canon. Should we bother? Well, some of the Apocrypha, I said, are worthwhile historical books. But just let me read you a bit, uh, from, uh, uh, uh, the, the, uh, uh, the Maccabees. Where at one stage, you'll see the Jews were defeated, and some of them were killed in battle. And when, uh, the fellow Jews came to pick up the corpses, they found that these Jews, if you please, had pagan images under their clothes, do you see? They concluded that this was God's judgment on them. They had been killed in battle. They had fallen because they'd compromised with idolatry and had these pagan symbols, uh, under their clothes. So what next? They offered sacrifices for them because they did really believe in the resurrection. And if you believe in the resurrection, then you raise the question of where have these men gone then? Where will they end up? So they offered sacrifices for them, for they held it was a good and a proper and profitable thing to do, to offer sacrifices for the dead, that they might be delivered from their torments. Here straight is the doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the dead that they might be delivered from their torments. Gentlemen, if you accept these books into the canon, what will you say about this practice of offering sacrifices for the dead, that they might be delivered from their torments? And what is more, if you accept some of these books in to the Old Testament, Susanna and the elders. You might decide that they border on the pornographic. And they're silly stories anyway. And silly miracles, a lot of them. In my humble judgment, it is a matter that we ought to inform ourselves about and to be prepared to stand for the canon that our Lord himself recognized, and not to take the view that these books are part of the, uh, Old Testament for the church. Hmm. These matters may sound to you very obscured, complicated, and tiresome. Well, they are so. There's no disputing it. But if you were a medic student, you would have to learn a lot of stuff that is very tiresome. But you do need to know, if you're a medic, the difference between one drug and another, whether it is poisonous or not, because people's lives might depend on it. And the issues at stake as to whether these apocryphal books are part of the canon or not is an exceedingly important practical question, because you'll see, uh... the question of salvation comes in, and the question of authority, let alone the question of inspiration And and revelation. revelation. Let me read you what Freddie Bruce says on this whole matter of the Old Test- the text of the Old Testament. Before the discovery of the Qumran manuscripts, Sir Frederick Kenyon, he was the director of the British Museum in London, asked what he called a great indeed all important question with regard to the traditional text of the Hebrew Bible. It was this. Does this Hebrew text, which we call Masoretic, and which we have shown to descend from a text drawn up about a A- AD, faithfully represent the Hebrew text as originally written by the authors of the Old Testament books. The Qumran discoveries have enabled us to answer this question in the affirmative, with much greater assurance than was possible before nineteen forty seven. Well, let's lead us, leave it there, gentlemen, for the time being. I hope I've said enough to show you that, uh, we must be interested in this question of the canon of the Old Testament nowadays more than ever it has, uh, been necessary in the preceding two hundred years. We shall need to be certain as to, well, what is our Old Testament canon and what is the authoritative word of God, as distinct from some of the doctrines that are put forward in the Old Testament Apocrypha.