Transcription
Hello and welcome to this episode of Ask Anti Write Anything, the program where we try to answer your questions about Jesus, the Bible, and the life of faith. I'm Mike Bird from Ridley College, and I'm joined with >> with Tom Wright from Wickliff Hall in Oxford. Uh Tom, we've got a question this week about exile, about the northern tribes who went into exile 7:22 taken away by the Babylonian Empire. Let me ask you, Tom, before we get into it, where would be the best and worst place for you to be sent into exile? Where would be the place where you go, "Oh, fine. Send me to the outer Hees. That'd be great." Or like, "Oh, God, gosh, no. Don't please don't send me to Australia with all the other convicts. Where's the best and worst place to go into exile?
>> You're reminding me of a a famous bishop from a previous day who said that when he was a young man called to ordination, he said, "Lord, I'll go anywhere you like, but please, not Southeast Asia, uh not the Arctic, and not Birmingham." Um, and he said, "Well, so having then spent a long time as a missionary in Singapore, um, now as bishop of Birmingham, I'm waiting for my call to the North Pole." In other words, go God can take our plans and turn them around different directions. For me, yeah, the the lovely places to be exiled might be where I am right now, sitting here in the outer heedes, or it might be somewhere lovely like New Zealand. Um uh which I know you appreciate, Mike, even though you're from across the that bit of the sea. Um, I I haven't visited that much of the world, so I'm not quite sure which bits I would really find unpleasant. I suspect very cold or very hot places would not be convenial to uh to somebody from my background. Um but also I think some places I have been to some places which seem to carry really sad and dark memories where bad things have happened where you walk into a town and you just have a sense that this is not a happy place. Now it may be that as a minister of the gospel one is called to go to such a place from time to time but at my age I'd rather not. Thank you very much.
Yeah, I could definitely share the uh the idea of Birmingham being a bit of a penal posting, but I uh I don't want to I don't want to uh speak ill of Birmingham. I guess for me the best places to be exiled to would be the Sunshine Coast >> or North Sunshine Coast in Queensland or somewhere in North Carolina. I really do love >> I do love North Carolina. Think >> not in the summer, doesn't it? >> It is, but I I love it in the winter. Uh probably the worst place for me to go. I think the worst place for me to go would be any coffee shop that smells of coffee. That is literally because I can't stand the taste or the smell of coffee. So, if uh anyone wants to punish me, basically imprisoning me to be a barista would be would be my idea of something terrible.
>> It it wouldn't help if they allowed you to put salted caramel flavoring in it.
>> Yeah, I could try. I've tried the half decaf mockuccino with extra sprinkles and a shot of caramel, but it it just didn't work for me. But anyway, Tom, let's let's get away from um exile and get back into biblical exile. We've got a question from Gideon Carlton in Northport, USA about the fate of the Northern Tribes. He says this, "Hello, I have been loving the podcast, especially the bonus episodes. So glad to hear, Gideon. No FOMO for you. I was wondering what your thoughts are on the restoration of the northern tribes. This seems to be a big theme that I think either gets overlooked or it's the subject of hyperfixation. Ezekiel 37:15-23 has some curious statements that are connected with the reunion of Israel and Judah. Anything surrounding Israel nowadays is controversial. That's definitely true. But I think that having a solid understanding of the topic can help overcome a lot of dispensationalist and adjacent beliefs. I would love to hear your thoughts as I have spent many hours studying similar topics and I still find it difficult to grasp. Tom, uh, any strong thoughts on the northern tribes? Because I I know for you the end of exile is a big theme. That's a big biblical theme.
>> It's in second temple Judaism. It's in Kuman. I think it's I agree with you. It's in the gospels. There's hints of it I think in Romans as well.
>> Do we have any idea of the fate of the northern tribes who went into exile not in Babylon >> but in Assyria, you know, taken to northern Iraq in effect.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I mean, taken to northern Iraq, what we now call northern Iraq. And and it seems to me dispersed thereafter. And I don't think that there's anyone who in the ancient world who writes about those tribes in such a way that would make us now think ah so they you tribe of Reuben went off there and the tribe of Manasse went off there. I don't I just don't think we know that. Um so that the the sense of the land being denuded of um threequarters of the the the um Israelite population that that's an extraordinary thing which of course leaves a vacuum which then um is filled by the Samaritans and filled by lots of um of non-Jewish uh non-Israelite peoples who come in so that by the time some of the Judans come back from Babylon, they don't all because there's still a thriving Judeian community in Babylon. for a long time thereafter. Um but when some of them come back, they're not coming back to take over um a whole land. There was no um nation called Israel in say the first century BC. Um there were simply some places where some Judans had rebuilt cities and towns and that district the area around that town was um populated by Judeans who'd come back from from Babylon. But um there's a lot of a lot of misunderstanding about that. But when it comes to the northern tribes um I really don't think we're told very much. and the passage in Ezekiel which actually we we are recording this um in Holy Week in in um 2026 and there are terrible things happening in the Middle East right now. Um uh unspeakable things happening in the Middle East and some people I am told are quoting Ezekiel 37 and 38 um which is all about the judgment on Gog. And there's Gog and Magog and and so on. And Gog is the chief prince of Meek and Tubal. And I know that there are some people who've taken those passages and allied them to some kind of dispensationalist vision of the so-called end times and said, well, this was God's judgment on a promised judgment on the nations surrounding Israel and and threatening Israel. And so what we are now seeing in the bombing of Iran and so on is God's judgment on Gog or whatever it may be. Now that's a very long shot. Um quite apart from anything else. Um there's nothing in the text here about a great army from across the sea to the west coming to do this or or whatever. So there's all sorts of oddities about it. But also the whole of the last section of Ezekiel, the the latter parts of the 30s and on into the 40s um is all seen in the New Testament as fulfilled in Christ. So that particularly the return of the glory of God to the rebuilt temple is not interpreted in the New Testament as an actual physical third temple with then the divine glory coming to dwell there. Rather when we see images of the temple and the glory coming to dwell there in the New Testament, this is about Jesus himself. the word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst. And he spoke of the temple of his body. And then Paul spoke of the temple which was the church and also individual believers. Now I say that not just to admit that we really don't know very much about the northern tribes but as a way of saying we have to be very careful how we interpret a great passage like Ezekiel. Um because Paul says in 2 Corinthians that all the promises of God find their yes in the Messiah. And that flies completely in the face of those who have said for the last 150 or so years, actually slightly more than that with the Scoffield Reference Bible and so on. Um that that actually some promises were held in obeyance and that the prophetic clock has now restarted and we're back on track for that. Um, and that I think is so full of dangerous mistakes that we ought to say firm a no as firm a no as we can to it. In terms of the northern tribes, my mind goes to Romans chapter 9 where Paul quotes not just from Hosea but also from Isaiah when he says um if the number of the sons of Israel had been like the sand of the sea only a remnant will be saved because God will do a word which is a completion and a cutting off. Log on a finishing off and a cutting off. Um, and that goes in my mind with all those prophetic passages um which which speak of God cutting down Israel to a stump. Think of Isaiah chapter 6 where um the the prophecy is about a tree which is cut back and cut back and then even the stump is burnt out and then the holy seed is the stump. Um but all the rest of that tree has gone. And that seems to be the message of Isaiah. And so when we have it here, um Paul quoting from Hosea in Romans 9:25 and following and then from Isaiah chapter 10 in verse 27 and then um in Isaiah chapter 1 in Romans 9:29, if the Lord of hosts had not left us spermma, a seed, it's that seed theme again, we would have been like Sodom or Gomorrah. It's it's as though don't imagine that God's purpose is to say, "Okay, let let's just gather them all back again and then it'll all be all right." You you God doesn't seem to put the clock back like that. That those northern tribes were warned that if they persisted in the idolatrous ways of the pagan nations surrounding them, then they would be lost. They would be destroyed. They would be sent off um into outer darkness. And it looks as though that's the story which the Old Testament as a whole tells. And I don't see anything in the New Testament that says, "Oh, by the way, um when God restores Israel, whatever that means, then they will all be brought back." Now, it's possible, it's possible that for some in the early church, the gentile mission may have been seen at least partly in terms of God sending his messengers out to call the scattered lot back home again. I don't think that's actually what's going on, but I can see that some people might have read it like that, that there's lots of God's people who have been spread all over the face of the earth. They need to hear that the Messiah has come. Um, I don't think that's how it works. I think in Acts we see Paul going to the synagogue communities and telling the story of Israel um and saying that the Messiah has come. But I don't think he ever says in Acts, so some of you who may after all be descended from Manasse or Reuben or or or whoever it may be, um, it's your time to come back. That is that comes through into later Christian speculation in the 18th century when people are thinking maybe the lost tribes went to South America. Maybe if we go to South America we'll find them again and we'll be able to tell them the good news and then the end will come. There was lots of spec millennial speculation of that sort. But that's much much much later many centuries later than the New Testament. And I think where the New Testament doesn't give us really anything to go on, it behooves us to be a bit reticent, a bit humble about saying we know what the answer is. Now, if anyone listening to this has a new answer that you and I haven't thought of, then do please write it and tell us because it would be fascinating. But I I'm not aware where where such a thing will be found.
>> Yeah. I mean, I've done a little bit of a study of groups in northern Iraq, like in places like the Adi, you know, like between basically Armenia and Persia, those sort of like buffer kingdoms.
>> Sure.
>> And I mean, there were some isolated Jewish communities, but who knows what their origins were. I mean, the the Assyrian Empire did fall, >> but unlike the fall of the Babylonian Empire, there wasn't a Cyrus figure >> who set all the captives free and said, you know, of course, go back to your homeland, rebuild your temples, worship your ancestral gods.
>> The the Assyrian kingdom never had a Cyrus like moment. So, it's going to be a little bit different than the story that unfolds for the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
>> Yeah. And and I mean th those prophecies that Paul quotes in in Romans nine um are very much saying actually God could and quite possibly should have exiled you all forever. But um in the mercy of God because he promised Abraham what he promised Abraham then the Lord of hosts has left us a remnant. But then he stresses it's a remnant by grace. Um it's not that there were some uh of the ancient Israelites for whom after all the ethnic status was going to work after all as it were. Um and in other words if there is a remnant of Israelites of who've come to faith in Jesus as Messiah then this is a work of grace not something that they were able just to sit back and wait for it to happen because after all we're children of Abraham so it's going to work out isn't it? Paul would say absolutely not. Just like John the Baptist would have said.
Okay. Well, Tom, let's change topics. Let's go from exile to some ex Jesus of Paul's letters about the atonement. We've got another question from Vladimir Leedv in Vernon Hills, Illinois about penal substitutionary atonement. This is what Vladimir asks. Michael and Tom, thank you very much for your discussions on important theological topics. Tom interprets 2 Corinthians 5:21 more adequately in my view than the traditional emphasis on Jesus somehow embibing human sin and injecting his righteousness into believers in return. But in his writings, that's Tom's writings, he only vaguely relates his interpretation to the Old Testament sacrifices, also mentioning the substitution of the Savior for the sinner in Paul and the faithfulness of God. From his otherwise helpful comments, it is not clear what he makes of substitution in light of the Old Testament background, given that he does not support penal substitution. Well, again, that's not quite 100% true, but does not support it everywhere. Hence, a two-fold question. Uh, first, if the element of substitution is present in the Levitical and other Old Testament systems of belief, is the element penal also present and definitive? And if so, should it be present in 2 Corinthians 5:21, at least in the back of Paul's mind, and thus serve to support the penal substitutionary atonement theory? Then second, in the case of 2 Corinthians 5:21, does not uh does does this support penal substitution? Uh is there any point referring to substitution of humans by the Messiah at all when there is such a great helpful practical and transforming emphasis in the Bible on the believer's participation, involvement, unity, and co-working with the Messiah in God. Uh he died, all died, we died with him. Uh, so that's Vladimir's question. It's a little bit wordy, but if I can unpack it, I think he's asking, "What does penal substitution have to do with 2 Corinthians 5:21?" Do we find the same thing there, or is completely different? Now, I should say, Tom, this is something we've gone over many times before. uh you do believe in a view of substitutionary atonement, but you've got to unpack it precisely rather than go for the somewhat stereotypical view of it. And anyone who's familiar with your exesence, exesus of Romans, you know, the heart of Romans, that great book where you set this out. So there you've articulated a view of substitutionary atonement. But I think it's fair to say two things. We can raise a big question as to whether the Old Testament sacrifices were substitutionary. I'm not a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, but I know some Hebrew Bible scholars and when they talk about sacrifices and purity in cleansing and blood, they see it maybe in a slightly different system or framework than perhaps what you get out of the Reformation. Okay, that that's my understanding of scholarship on the Levitical sacrifices in Hebrews. And in order for uh substitutionary atonement to be legitimate, it doesn't have to be everywhere. So, it doesn't need to be found in 2 Corinthians 5:21. And when I think of 2 Corinthians 5:21, I think of that the idea of exchange. You know, Mona Hooker wrote a famous good on article on this on exchange in Christ. Actually, while I'm here, why don't I read out 2 Corinthians 5:21 and I'll use your New Testament for everyone translation. So, for people who are following the podcast, I'll now read out the verse in question. Okay? The Messiah did not know sin, but God made him to be sin on our behalf so that in him we might embody God's faithfulness to the covenant. Tom, what's your take on Vladimir's question and where does this amazing verse in two Corinthians sit in relation to sacrifice, atonement, and substitution? Can you pull all the threads together for us?
>> What what a great question, but um of course it will take at least a book to answer it. Fortunately, I have written one such book, though it's not a complete answer. My book, The Day the Revolution Began, I is specifically aimed at understanding the biblical doctrine of penal substitution over against subbiblical doctrines of penal substitution. And I say that to make it quite clear there is a biblical doctrine of penal substitution. The clearest passage I think is actually in Romans 8:1-4 where Paul says there is no condemnation for those who are in the Messiah because the law of the spirit of the life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death because God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the the dayoma the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who believe. Now very clear this is uh paw he condemned sin in the flesh therefore it is sub and it is also substitutionary. He was condemned therefore there is no condemnation for us. So no question there is a biblical doctrine of penal substitution. My problem is that the way that that has come through really ever since Anel a thousand years ago whenever it was um is within the wrong narrative and the narrative that we've all learned from early age as as um ordinary western Christians goes something like this. And God wanted to have people come and join him in heaven. The problem is that that humans are sinful and so they can't go and be with him in heaven. Therefore, God has to find a way of dealing with their sinfulness so that they can after all go to be with him in heaven. So God finds a way of punishing somebody else in their place and in answer to all the questions is how is that fair and how does that work? Well, the endless discussions of that. But so that then if we believe in this and why belief should have anything to do with it at that point isn't quite clear in the theory but still then ph we're all right we will get to to go to heaven and now in my book the day the revolution began I've said that is the wrong narrative it's not that the idea of penal substitution is wrong it's that if you put it in the wrong narrative you actually mess it up you falsify it and the way I say it there is that we have platonized our esque esquetology that is we've thought in terms of our souls going to heaven. Therefore, we have moralized our anthropology that instead of thinking in terms of the human vocation to be God's imagebearers in his world, we've simply seen being human as God setting us a moral examination which we all fail. And therefore, we have paganized our sotiology because it's in the ancient pagan world that you find gods who are cross with somebody. and so demand that somebody else gets killed. Think of of the old um Greek uh dramas and so on. Um and and some Christians have said, "Oh no, those Greek dramas um about uh uh people being sacrificed in order that the winds would blow in the right way or whatever it was and they were a preparation for the gospel." I want to say no, they're not. They are a paganization of of any such thing. So that what you've got in the New Testament instead is not about how does my soul get to heaven even though I'm sinful. It's about how will God come and dwell with us even though we are sinful. And that's the question to which the tabernacle in the wilderness and its whole attendant Levitical um uh ceremonies in in the book of Leviticus. Um they are the initial answer to that that God wants to come and dwell in the midst of his people even though they're sinful. And that the blood of the sacrifices is nothing to do with those animals being killed as a punishment in place of the worshippers. But it's the release of the blood which then acts as the cleansing agent because the blood is the life and God has given this life because what's keeping God and humans apart is death. And death is the ultimate uh the the ultimate horror and sin matters really because it's heading towards death. It's turning away from the God of life. And so if the death gets wiped away by life, then God will come and dwell with his people. As I've often said at the end of the book of Exodus, the tabernacle is set up with Aaron as the chief priest and the whole thing. God comes to dwell in the tabernacle and for that you need a strong health and safety code to cope with God coming and dwelling. Turn over the page and you've got the book of Leviticus and that's basically what it's all about. And then likewise with Solomon's temple so that the point about the temple and the sacrifice isn't here. I'm very much with the Hebrew Bible scholars and my former colleague in St. Andrews, David Moffett has written all this up in terms of the letter to the Hebrews who say that this the sacrificial system was not about God punishing animals in the place of humans. The only animal that has sins transferred onto its head is the one animal in the whole thing which doesn't get killed because it's now impure. You couldn't offer it as a sacrifice. Um that would be an insult to God. So, it gets driven away into the wilderness as a sign of the sin being driven away. Um, but that's not to do with the killing of the animals. Now, there's been a whole raft of misinterpretations of the New Testament on the basis of that wrong idea of sacrifice. Once we clear that out of the way, then room can be made for what I see in the gospels, which is the announcement of God becoming king despite the fact that the world has been taken over by evil powers. And the way that God becomes king is through the king of Israel, the Messiah, dying the death of the ungodly in order to defeat the principalities and powers that have used the ungodliness of human beings as a way in to start control well to continue controlling the world. I mean, humans have the responsibility, the vocation to bring God's wise order into the world. When humans don't do that, when they worship idols instead, they give to the idols their power and the idols say, "Thank you very much. We will now run the world because we represent mammon, money, um, Mars, war, um, Aphrodites, sex, etc. And we will tell humans what to do, and they will have to do it because we have the power to do that." And what you see in the gospel as Paul says is is that God disarmed the principalities and powers, made a public example of them because they did their worst to God's Messiah. And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, if they'd realized what they were doing, they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory because it was the powers were signing their own death warrants. But how did the crucifixion of Jesus defeat the powers? The answer is clear in the gospel narratives Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because the Messiah is taking the place of sinners. Um Jesus takes the place of Barabus. The the bring on the cross says this man has done nothing and missed but we are getting what we deserve. There is the note of substitution is woven in not as a dogma imposed but as structurally part of the narrative but it's a narrative of God's victory over the powers. Now I could go on all day about that and I climbs too but that is all there in my book the day the revolution began and in various other places when it comes down to 2 Corinthians 5. What I want to make quite clear is that 2 Corinthians 5:21 is not a detached statement of atonement theology. It has regularly been taken that way. Look what what is going on here is Paul's apologia for his own particular apostilhip and for the ministry of the apostolic ministry of the church in general because he says in verse 19 God was in the Messiah reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the word of reconciliation. That's the first time he says it. So God is doing what he does on the cross and he's giving us this ministry of reconciliation. Then he says, "So we beseech people on behalf of the Messiah to be um reconciled to God. Um because then verse 21, the one who did not know sin, he made to be sin on our behalf so that in him we might be." And we should expect by now a statement of Paul's apostolic ministry. And that's precisely what we get. That when Paul is doing what he's called to do, then this is the way in which God is extending his covenant into the wider world. Which is why immediately, and forget the chapter division, immediately at the beginning of chapter 6, he quotes from Isaiah 49:8, "At the acceptable time I I listened to you at the day of salvation, I helped you." And the very next verse is, "I have given you as a covenant to the people." The whole passage is about um Paul addressing the Corinthians puzzlement on the odd nature of his apostilhip. And he's saying, "No, this is how it works. God did it in Christ and now I have this ministry of reconciliation which extends God's covenant faithfulness into the wider world. So the whole theory which has come from Anselm through the reformers through a lot of 19th century teaching into the present day we have to put that on hold. There's a lot of truth in it but it doesn't get the overall narrative right. When we do get the overall narrative right, the whole question of sacrifices is it becomes a different sort of question about God living with us, not us living with God. And then it frees up passages like this to be what they really are, which is an exposition and defense of Paul's apostolic ministry. Now, as I say, I've written a lot about this and um so our correspondent and anyone else can go and find it, but that would be this the sum and the center of what I think is going on.
>> Well, Tom, I thought that was vintage right uh right there. So, seriously, I would urge listeners to the program uh go back to about the 34 minute, not 34, the 24 minute mark and uh around about there and listen to the way Tom explains what the Old Testament sacrifices do and don't do and about the scapegoat and about that will be mind-blowing for you and for a lot of your friends and how he then ties into the story of Jesus and then Paul's own apostolic ministry. That that is good stuff. Yeah, I I think that the main thing you said there, Tom, is right. It's not about how can my sinful soul find peace in the presence of God's heaven. It's about and now the dwelling of God is with men. Okay. Absolutely. It's it's almost as if it's about God's homecoming. Um you should write that down, Tom. That could be that could be a good name for a book. I think it's got potential.
>> I quite agree. I quite agree. And of course, that's part of what Paul is saying extraordinarily about his own apostolic ministry, that when he is suffering and being shipwrecked and being beaten up and being condemned by courts and so on, that this is actually displaying to the world what the gospel is all about. It's displaying Jesus to the world. And this is for Paul God's homecoming through the spirit in his apostolic ministry. It is God on display before the world through the suffering of the apostle and all those who are bringing the gospel into the world.
>> Great. Well, Tom, I think we should take a break there. There's a lot we've been into. Let's take a break and when we come back, we're going to talk about which version of the Old Testament should we get into. Should it be the Hebrew, the Latin, the Greek? We're going to get into that topic right after this message. pretty much universally social science suggests that many of the institutions that we hold dear that shape us that provide us social support a huge amount of this used to happen anyway inside of these traditional religious structures and there really has been nothing to replace it.
>> it's amazing how quickly ostensible deontologists transform before our very eyes into utilitarians on this question.
>> we're talking about what the self is here I mean atheists believe in the self everybody believes in the Well, no, that's not I mean that that I I find difficult to believe. Why Why would an atheist believe in the self? The self is a series of non-deciding mechanisms. The arguments against God are are fairly compelling and I think the arguments against atheism are fairly compelling. The difference is that most people who believe in God have expressed doubts and a lot of people who are atheists tend to be more religious in this way than many of the people who are God believers. If people listening agree with me that free will in fact doesn't exist and simultaneously agree with you that free will is somehow necessary for the upkeep of civilization, then I would simply ask them to consider who's relying on the delusion here. This show does seem to have an extraordinary capacity for putting me face to face with people that I've been talking smack about online. So, thanks again and welcome back. Hope you're enjoying this episode of Ask Entright Anything. Remember, you can send us your questions by going to ask.com and just submit a question. Maybe you'll get on the program. Maybe a a question like the one we've got from SuPakala. Hope I pronounced that correctly from Boston, USA. And this is a question about versions of the Old Testament. And this is what Suar asks. If scripture is the supreme authority for the church, which Old Testament cannon should Christians regard as authoritative, the Hebrew cannon or the Septuagen? The Septuagent is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Since the early church made extensive use of the Septuagent and the New Testament often reflects it, how should Christians think about the relationship between scriptural authority, canon formation, and the church's role in recognizing scripture? Also, please respond to why traditions not given authority in Protestant denominations as compared to scripture. So Tom, yeah a big question there. I mean for people who don't know the Bible was the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic and then after Alexander the Great conquered the you know the the Middle East effectively. A lot of the Hebrew scriptures were then translated into Greek because a lot of Jews in Alexandria in Ephesus, Greek was their main language and then that became the Old Testament of the early church and then later on it gets translated into Latin that becomes part of the Vulgate of the early church. And there's also a lot of other Greek books that were not in the Hebrew Bible like one and two Mcabes or the book of uh Sarak although it did had a that did have an Hebrew origin that got that was more popular in Greek. There's you know one Ezra's and a number of other books that were you know important for Greekeaking Jews but were never part of the Hebrew Bible. Tom, maybe we could put this question down to um do you like your Bible with an apocrypha? Uh for those who don't know those books that which are in the Greek Old Testament, but not in the Hebrew Bible. They're often called Judo canonical or they're called the Apocrypha. I found out the Greek Orthodox Church just calls their Bible the anoganeson. Stuff to be read. That's what they call it, stuff to be read. It's a very simple name. Cuts through all the problems. But Tom, do you like your Bible with or without an apocrypha?
>> Well, I have for many years carried um a Bible which has an apocrypha in it. This is a new edition, but um uh I've used that partly because there is, as the questioner said, so much of what's in the apocrypha which has echoes in the New Testament that it's very helpful to me to be able to go back. I think particularly for instance of the way in which the book called the wisdom of Solomon which is almost certainly roughly contemporary with Jesus give or take uh 50 60 70 years the wisdom of Solomon has a lot in common with Paul with Romans for instance and people have written dissertations and books on um the interplay between Paul and the wisdom of Solomon. Now for me that's fascinating because what I think wisdom of let's just start off at with that what I think wisdom of Solomon is doing is wrestling with some of the big questions uh facing the Judeaic peoples in roughly the first centuries BC and AD and how they then are rereading their scriptures particularly retelling the story of the Exodus and not least interpreting some of the psalms the psalms of suffering and vindication in terms of then their own suffering and vindication that they were facing at the time. So that I've often thought that the first five chapters or so of the book called the wisdom of Solomon could be seen as a largecale unpacking of Psalm 2. Why are the nations raging and and fighting and so on? Um actually God has got all this in control and he's going to vindicate his people in in the end. and and that's a theme which you find in Daniel and elsewhere. So I for me those apocryphal books are very helpful in understanding how people in the time of Jesus give or take a few centuries were understanding their scriptures. And again and again, even though I wouldn't necessarily want to preach from those books, I certainly wouldn't if I was engaged in a doctrinal discussion, I wouldn't quote those books as evidence for a particular point of view. Nevertheless, they help me to be sure that I'm thinking first century Jewishly about the New Testament rather than um superimposing stuff from much later centuries back onto the New Testament. And so they help to keep me grounded in the world of the first century Judeans. Um that that for me is enormously important. out in terms of the New Testament's use of the Old. Yes, the New Testament does frequently quote the Septuagent and as a Pauline scholar, I've noted all sorts of places where Paul seems to be working with uh a particular Septuent verse, whereas when we go to the Hebrew, it may seem to be saying something uh a bit different or in some cases quite radically different. And it seems to me that Paul and the others are not as worried about that as some 18th century rationalists would be.
>> Yeah, there's a problem here in that ever since the 16th century reformation, the reformers said, "We don't believe in the authority of the pope. We believe in the authority of scripture." And then of course the question bounces back and so which scriptures and which version and what how does that work? And so the question comes out of this kind of nervous where is our real authority and do we believe that it's verbally inspired and did God inspire the Septuagent and and all all those sorts of things. And then when you get 18th century rationalists who are responding to the rationalist deists of the time, they are trying to take a kind of ultrarocan view which says well no um since scripture is the authority it must be verbally inspired. It must be inherent. It must be infallible. It must be this that and the other. And really the early church I think would say lighten up guys. That's not the point. Tell the story. Read the story. Pray the story. live in the story. This is the book that God wanted you to have. And from that point of view, I'm very much with what you said about the the Greek Orthodox. This is the stuff we read. You know, we don't we we we love Shakespeare, but we don't read Shakespeare in church. Um we we we love all sorts of books, but we don't read them in order to form our faith. Whereas when we read this book, the Bible, and when we learn to understand it as the first century Christians would have understood it, then we are formed and built up around Jesus the Messiah. Now those apocryphal books um if taken to their logical extreme would actually lead you away from Jesus ultimately, but they show you the world of thought within which Jesus first hearers and expositors were living. I mean if you take the book of Sierak, the wisdom of Jesus, Ben Sierak, then ultimately the great revelation of God is when the high priest is in the temple looking round in all his robes and so on. And well, we know what Jesus said about the people who ran the temple and all that. So that though there is enormous wisdom in the book of Jesus Ben Sierak, the book we call Ecclesiasticus, um I wouldn't say that's a guide to Christian reading of the New Testament. It's a guide to understanding the world in which some of the New Testament writers were living. For instance, the great list of heroes towards the end of Bener is one of the early versions of what you then find in Hebrews 11, a list of the heroes of faith, Noah, Abraham, etc. Um, so we can see through that the way they were thinking rather than trying to say, uh, was it verbally inspired or wasn't it verbally inspired. So I think yeah the the the books are there to be read and as you read them and especially as you read them while you're reading the gospels and Paul and Acts and Revelation and Hebrews and so on then you are discovering what it's like to think like a first century Judeian following Jesus the Messiah rather than like uh the 16th century or 11th century or 19th century Christian who's only focused on the the traditional debates that are going on at that I I hope that's helpful. There are many other questions.
>> I think it's very helpful. I think it's helpful. I mean, I've been I've been doing a lot of work recently, Tom, on on the book of Jude.
>> Sorry, the book of Judah, I should say, uh to get that right where it quotes from one Enoch on the assumption of Moses. So, I mean, we should do an episode or maybe a bonus episode on something like that. But yeah, only a couple of weeks ago because I'm teaching the gospel of John and we're doing, you know, in the beginning was the word and I told my students, go and read uh Ben Sierak uh chapter 24, you know, the story that that wisdom came and tabernacled amongst the people and became effectively took place in the Torah. And I say that same kind of language John is using it's not just like Pho and Plato. This is sort of, you know, the Judeian world of also been Sierra where he applies incarnation language to wisdom in the Torah, but
>> John applies it to Jesus. The the tabernacling is is what happens with Jesus. So yeah, there there's a lot of good things we could do there.
>> Absolutely. And you mentioned um uh one Enoch and so on and that of course is not in the apocrypha, that's in what we've loosely called the pseudapigrapher. It's a rather clunky word. um the all sorts of other books from roughly from the same period. I would include the the Kumran scrolls in there. I would include um Josephus. There's lots of other books which from different angles show you how people were thinking at the time and what are the key issues that they're addressing. And then when you come back to the New Testament and say they're addressing those issues, but they're doing so as Jesus followers. doing so as spirit indwelt people and then all sorts of new pathways to understanding open up.
>> Yeah, that's great. Well, so you can definitely read the apocrypha. It's much better than reading stuff like the case for the purposedriven left behind prayer of Jbe's shack code. So rather than read that kind of dril, you should definitely read the apocrypha. It'll be it'll be informative. Maybe not always edifying, but it'll definitely be informative. And in fact the church Mike to which you and I belong the Anglican communion from the re reformation onwards has said that um here are the canonical books um the ones in the Hebrew script Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures the old testament um and here are the other books which we can read for edification but not to establish doctrine. Um and that's that's not a bad rough and ready thing. Of course, that's partly because what they had in mind was the passage in Mcabes where um they're offering sacrifices on behalf of the people who were found to have um pagan prayer symbols under their garments after they'd been killed in battle. Oh dear, will they make the resurrection? Well, we better pray to God for them. And so the medieval church said, "There you are. This is about purgatory. This is about we pray for the dead that they'll get get to heaven." In fact, as I've argued in the relevant bit of my new book, God's Homecoming, that's not what that passage in Mcabes is about at all. But that was partly what was driving the reformers to be wary of the Makabian literature. But of course, but they said, but you can read all that stuff >> because it it's helpful to build up your overall understanding. Even if when you're having a doctrinal debate, if such is required, you wouldn't base anything on it. Yep. Well, on that note, Tom, I think we're going to call it a day. That's all we have time for. In our next episode, we're going to answer questions about more anxiety about a uh unhealthy synretatism between the MAGA world and Christianity. So, we'll get a little bit political. We'll answer a question about the meaning and purpose of life. And I'm looking forward to this one, Tom. How to teach a writing esquetology in your church. I'm looking forward to that one. And remember, we've got a great back catalog of episodes. So, if you ever think, I wonder if Tom and Mike ever addressed a question on, say, the rapture, well, we definitely did. You can go check us out in our back catalog. And also, don't forget to have a look at the YouTube channel, you know, subscribe to that and check out some of the great stuff that Premier puts out like the CS Lewis podcast and some other great stuff, too. Otherwise then it's goodbye from me Mike Bird >> and goodbye from me Tom Wright >> and we look forward to joining you again on the next episode of Ask Auntie Wright Anything.