rd | Canon Concluded

Hello, everyone. Today is Friday, June the 23rd. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. If you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com.

That's right. You guys can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the show, sharing it online, leaving us a good review on iTunes or Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasting content from. We're going to leave a link in the description of this podcast so you can do just that. Our verse of the day today comes from 1 Peter 1, verse 13. Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's the hope that we all have, that day that we're looking for, that great and dreadful day where he's coming back again on the clouds with glory and fire. That's our calling, to be sober-minded. Be ready. Rest your hope fully upon the grace, not the promise that you've been given that something's going to happen if you do good, but it's grace that's being given to you that's brought at the revelation. When you hear the good word, there's grace and there's mercy that comes into your life.

That's what we rest our hope on, sober-mindedly. That phrase at the beginning, gird up the loins of your mind, that's a really strange phrase. But girding up your loins, that's something people did when they wore tunics and they were getting ready to go into battle.

They tied it up, so it made this short situation. And it was to symbolize, like, I'm ready at a moment's notice. Since you've got a long tunic robe thing, it's tough to fight, move around, mobility is decreased, but if your loins are girded, you're ready to go.

You're ready to roll. You gird up the loins so the enemy can catch them hands. Or catch that steel. That hard Valyrian steel.

Don't say that, that's a Game of Thrones reference. So they can catch that steel. That iron steel. Iron steel's not a thing. No, it's not.

It's cold, like, obsidian steel. You're saying words that are not the same thing. Go ahead. But girding up your loins, it's that readiness. So your mind is always in a state of readiness. Resting in that hope, that's kind of what your fallback is, that's your support, the hope that's available in Jesus Christ.

That's true. Speaking of support and fallback and resting, how are you feeling? You look kind of strung out a little bit. I have dark circles under my eyes. You have hollows under your eyes.

The dark circles under my eyes are developing dark circles of their own. Yes, so you typically look sleep-deprived. You ever see The Walking Dead? Yes. Yeah.

Like the zombies in The Walking Dead? Oh, I didn't say that. I meant it, but I didn't say it. My life is consumed by curriculum right now. That's good. It is good. That's good, the structure. It's fun.

It's wonderful. And you didn't write the curriculum. I'm writing one of them. Oh, oh, oh. One of them.

What are you writing? So there's two big projects that are on the horizon for our children's ministry and for our youth ministry here at Clearview. Right.

One for our children's ministry is Vacation Bible School. That's big. It is big.

VBS at Clearview, that's not just like posters on the kiddie wall. That's a huge production. And I love it. I'm so excited about it. Elizabeth and I, my wife, we're kind of at the helm crafting this out, and we've got training for volunteers, and then we're planning decorations and learning the songs and the flow. It's a lot of fun. But simultaneously, while that's going on, we have our Illuminate mission trip coming up for our students, our student ministry here at Clearview.

That's very true. That we are writing the curriculum for. Okay.

So like quiet time guides for the students, Bible study curriculum, messages each night, overall flow of the day, a plan for our rec games, communicating with ministry sites. So we're pushing that forward and pushing this forward simultaneously. And there have been moments where they're starting to get blurred a little bit. I can see a solution I don't think you've really explored here.

What's that? Well, have you thought about, like, the kids need structure. The VBS kids need structure.

Need structure. So teenagers, have you thought about taking them on the mission trip and just kind of... What if you just let them do whatever? Bad move. Really?

Bad move. Like, the place has a pool, right? No. It doesn't have a pool? No, it doesn't have a pool. The place you before had a pool. Yes. But this place where we're going, where we're, like, writing the curriculum, doesn't have a pool.

It's up in the mountains. Okay. Okay. So let them go on a hike. Let them go on... Someone's gonna get poison ivy. Someone's gonna get lost. Someone's gonna get eaten. And it might be the same kid.

Or have you thought about just letting them, like, put them in a room and just give them their Bibles and say, y'all are doing your quiet time. Read this. Read this.

Until further notice. Yeah. Here's the end game, okay? Here's the bottom line. I'll just go ahead and lay this out for you.

Sure, sure, sure. Our kids are learning about what it looks like to shine Jesus's light in every situation, both good and bad, in their lives. Our students are learning what it looks like to go into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. Not just skim the surface of Christianity, but go to the next step and actually be engaged in the process of discipleship.

Being discipled themselves and making disciples. Elizabeth and I will sleep, maybe when we're dead. Well, shucks, sister. That's game over.

That's too bad. It looks like... You hear me talking about all this stuff, and it's a lot right now, but we have two things. Number one, we have a great team here, a great support team here at Clearview. Dr. Shaw, John, David, Nick, others on the team coming alongside and assisting so that we can oversee, which is phenomenal.

It would not be possible otherwise. We have a tremendous volunteer base for both VBS and for the mission trip. We are very, very fortunate, very blessed.

We count it a privilege to be a little bit tired and sleep-deprived working on these things for both our kids and our students. Amen, brother. Well, I'll be praying for you. We're going to get Dr. Shaw in just a second, but if you guys have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-582-5028, or visit us online at clearveetodayshow.com. Stay tuned.

We'll be right back. Well, good morning, afternoon, evening, Clearview Today listeners. My name is John. And I'm David.

And we just want to take a quick second and let you know about another way that you can keep in touch with Dr. Shaw's work, and that is his weekly podcast series, Sermons, by Avidan Shaw, Ph.D. As a lot of you may know, or maybe some of you don't know... If you don't know, you do now. And if you don't know, then maybe just hop off the podcast. David, hop off the podcast. I'm just playing.

I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shaw is actually the lead pastor of Clearview Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God-honoring lives.

One of the four core values of Clearview Church is that we're a Bible-believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from Scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the Word of God spoken into your life. And God's Word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

Sometimes it's conviction, and sometimes it's encouragement. But know that every time you listen to God's Word, you're inviting the Holy Spirit to move and work in your life. You guys can check out the sermons by Abbadon Shaw, Ph.D. podcast. First and foremost, check it out on our church app. That's the Clearview app. You can get that in the Google Play Store. You can get that on iTunes. But you can also find the podcast on the Apple podcast app or on our website at ClearviewBC.org. And listen, if you've got a little extra time on your hands, you just want to do some further reading, you can also read the transcripts of those sermons.

Those are available on Dr. Shaw's website, AbbadonShaw.com. And we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it. But for right now, David, let's hop back in.

All right. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadon Shaw, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028.

That's right. If today's your first time ever joining us here on the Clear View Today Show, we want to let you know you are welcome. We're glad you're here. Let you know who's talking to you today. Dr. Abbadon Shaw is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show.

You can find all of his work on his website, and that's AbbadonShaw.com. Dr. Shaw, I've got to tell you, I'm so excited to continue this conversation today. I feel like I've been launched out of a cannon. You were going to get that joke out. I was getting that joke. You interrupted me. I was getting that joke out. The punchline was there.

I was going to get it. The great Gonzo style. Yes. This was supposed to be a one-episode conversation, but it became three, because when we're talking about the Bible being unique as a canon, and you begin to compare other religions or this idea that everybody has their own holy books, and they're on the same level as the Bible for the Christians and as the Buddhist writings for the Buddhists. They're the people who haven't done their homework. When people say that, it means they haven't studied. What we're doing in this series is really taking it out part by part, and then looking at the body and going, okay, is this really apples to apples, or is it apples to... A tuna fish. Tuna fish. That's how all the greatest conversations go.

You're right, it was going to be just our Wednesday contends day episode, but then it spiraled into three, and it's like... It's heaven and earth different, especially with Buddhism. Now, we'll also maybe compare the Mormon writings or Jehovah's Witness literature or even the Quran or the Hindu books.

I want to compare them so people can see for themselves, oh, wow, we're talking about two very different things. And so when we talked about Buddhism, we learned there are three different traditions, the Theravada tradition, the Mahayana tradition, and the Tibetan tradition. And I explain all of those, how they are different in Buddhism. And the Theravada has their canon known as the Pali Canon, and they were passed down orally and finally penned 400 years later. Now, compare that with the Old Testament, New Testament, very different. There is no oral tradition passed down and then finally penned, and then finally agreed upon 500 more years later. And it's much larger than the Bible.

It's like 11 times bigger. And what is in there? I mean, I don't know. Ask an average Buddhist in the Theravada, they probably won't even know what you're talking about. Theravada, what does that mean? I mean, are you Theravada or Mahayana or Tibetan?

I don't know. I'm a Buddhist. Like I had friends who were Buddhist growing up in India, and they didn't know about any of this stuff. Not at all.

Not at all. I can tell you how Buddhism took on a new life in India. And this happened back right after the freedom.

Right after India got freedom, or maybe right before, somewhere in that period. And the big debate was, for the last group of people, they're known as sort of the untouchables, is what they would call them. You have the four castes and then you have the untouchables.

Untouchables are like outside the cast. I mean, they're doing all the menial, dirty labor, having to do with cleaning the toilets. Don't think of it as cleaning the toilets as janitors clean toilets today. I mean, this is like really filthy work. But this has been relegated to them by the gods. That's kind of sad to think about. But anyway, this is caste system at its finest.

So then came the big discussion. So now that these people are no longer in a caste, they're not bound by this age old tradition, where are they going to go? So some of the leaders of this final, this outside caste people, who are considered to be so unworthy that they don't even belong to a caste.

By the four castes, you have the Brahmin caste, you have the Kshatriyas, which are the fighters, and you have the Vaishyas, which are the business class, and the Shudras, which are the lower caste. But these are people. I mean, it's so sad. So where can they go now? And so they turn towards Christianity. And Christian leaders at the time, I think they made a mistake.

And I can understand the hesitation, but I think they made a mistake. They said, no, we don't want wholesale people becoming Christians. We don't want wholesale people becoming Christian. Forgetting the fact that many times in ancient or early Christianity was the entire people groups that became Christians. And in time they understood what it meant. Some did, some didn't.

So maybe they should have kept that kind of a context in mind that didn't. And they said, no, no, each one has to do their own thing. So guess where these people turn to? They turn to Buddhism. There's prejudice everywhere.

And I think this was a form of prejudice. And so now you're sitting there with your point, whatever percentage of Christians in India, which is sad. And the majority of them turned to Buddhism, I guess.

Oh yeah, yeah. The Buddhist, those caste-less people did that. So it's kind of a tragedy.

But so if you were to ask exact friends from that class of people and great friends, they were in and out of my home and I would go visit them and all that, never thinking anything other than that. But if you were to ask them, are you a Theravada or a Mahayana, they would make fun of it. I don't know, man. They had no idea. You see, why?

Because this was like a wholesale. Now you are, today you're a caste-less person. Tomorrow we're all going to be Buddhists. How do you think, how much do you think they understand all of this? True. Yeah.

In India, they don't. It was less like, I really want to dive deep into the ideology here and more like, this is my ticket out of being considered. It's not about enlightenment for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was more of a, we have a different status. We're no longer Hindus. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and, and they actually revere a person by the name of Ambedkar, Dr. Ambedkar, who was a very intelligent man and kind of a instrumental figure in India's independence. And he, he kind of came from that line and he had a heart for those people. And again, he, he became sort of a God to them in a way. So they revere him probably more than Buddha.

Wow. A human being from the 1940s. They revere him. He's the one, he's the guy. Because it was more about, he give, give us dignity and he is our hero. He's our champion. When everybody else tells us we're nobody, he, look at him.

The way he talks, the way he thinks, the way he stands up on the stage, he's our hero. And it's, I think that draws a lot of attention to the fact that, you know, human beings are going to worship something. They have to, and people think that they don't, well, I'm not going to worship anything, but that alone demonstrates that it's, it's ingrained within us to search for that thing to worship. Right. Yeah. So, but going back to our discussion, there are three traditions, Theravada, Mahayana, and Tibetan. Theravada had those, you know, the Pali, P-A-L-I canon. And this is where the Ajanta, Allura caves came from. Okay.

The Pali canon, as I mentioned to you last time, this is the way of the elders found in Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, Burma, Thailand, all those, you know, the earliest Buddhist community. Right. Right. And so these caves were maybe 45 minutes from where we grew up.

That's insane. And I would say maybe 200 years before Christ and 200 years after Christ, these were regularly worked upon by Buddhist monks who live there and they cut and chisel these massive rooms and temples out of this mountainside. Just like we went to see Mount Rushmore, right, in our staff retreat. Imagine a mountain bigger, wider, but like wider, like fatter, I would say. And instead of just flat or having these faces carved on the mountain, halls, massive halls carved inside the mountain. That's incredible. And they're not just like, like caves.

Okay. They're rooms with flat ceilings and flat walls and not just flat, they're ornate pillars. And not just that, but the walls are decorated with the various mudras of Buddha. Wow. Massive Buddha statue carved out of this one rock, the sleeping Buddha, the smiling Buddha, the weeping Buddha. I mean, all of this is unbelievable.

You know, stories and stories out of Buddha's life or, you know, these mythological stories and all that, all of that. So these are the people who did that. Your dad took you there to see it? Well, I went to the school too. You know, we took field trips.

I went with my dad and my family, you know, it was just amazing. But these are the people who did that. Very, very and these were forgotten for over a thousand some years. And a British officer who was hunting for tigers, because there were tigers where we grew up, not now, there's no tigers there, but they killed them all. But back in the day, yeah, back in the 1800s, I think it was, he was out hunting for tigers and this tiger disappeared and didn't know where it went.

And so he, you know, he was a hunting party, so they've been looking for it. And as they began to chop down these, these vines and trees and all that, whoa, what is this? Found the caves. Found these massive caves. Wow. That's incredible.

Next thing you know, they're like blown away. So anyways, that's coming from Theravada. Okay. Second is Mahayana. It has the Pali Canon as well, but many more, which it considers to be superior to the Pali, superior to Theravada. Remember, Mahayana Buddhism is like more the Chinese, Korean, Japanese type, more about enlightenment than anything else, right?

Then just the focus on Nirvana. And so the Mahayana, get ready for this, it has about a hundred thousand pages in printed form. Good gracious. I'm thinking of like trying to put, it's not in one book. I don't suppose it's like just this collection of volumes, libraries. Yeah. If you ever heard of the Sutra, like Lotus Sutra, it's part of the Mahayana Canon. Okay. Mahayana tradition. Wow.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around a hundred thousand pages. Like that's, yeah. Well, I consider, I imagine they would consider themselves superior if they have that amount of, cause I mean, I guess all of that is just, what you call it, like back, not backup, but like confirmation, like look how much is here. Of course. Yeah. Of course.

This is more, this is better. Have you read it all? No. Do you believe it? Of course.

What have you? I don't know. Yeah, but it's there. But I believe it.

It's there. Someone wrote it. So I mean, it's gotta be true.

Yeah. And then there's a Tibetan. Remember we talked about the Tibetan form or tradition of Buddhism, which came in the seventh century of Tibet, found in Nepal, parts of India, Bhutan, and it's more focused on the tantric practices, you know, the tribal type thing. This is part of, they have the Mahayana tradition, just like what we just read. So Pali Canon, a hundred thousand, and then they also have some other texts. So guess who has the largest tradition?

The Tibetan. Yeah. Cause they just take and they build. They add on from everybody. To keep it all. We keep it all.

Are the three canons in conflict with each other? No, they just think they're the one. Whoever's got the biggest. We got the most, so we got the best. Gotcha.

Gotcha. So the skinniest one would be the Theravada, which still is a lot, 11 times bigger than the Bible. The Mahayana has a hundred thousand pages plus, and the Tibetan has all that and more.

And more. It's like buffet style. Now Buddhism also spread to the West, as you know, and it was heavily influenced by Japanese Buddhism and a new kind of Buddhism emerged and is still emerging.

And it is a kind of a buffet style Buddhism, which tinkers with Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism and even Jodo or Pure Land Buddhism. So it's all put together. Yeah. They're all, there's kind of taking what works from everything, all what you think works and just mashing it into one.

So when, when people say, well, I'm a Buddhist. Well, what kind? Yeah. What are you?

More than likely they're talking about this Western conglomeration of whatever meets your need, make it work fit, enjoy yourself. Wow. Then when it comes to the Bible, we're not talking about that. Are we?

No, absolutely not. Well, you said something last episode that kind of struck me that I hadn't thought about, cause I always considered there's, there's one true Canon, but then even you said, well, we also have our multiple Canons. Right. We have the Jewish Canon, we have the Protestant, we have the Roman Catholic, we have the Orthodox.

Okay. The Jewish Canon traditionally, a number of books is 24. Micra, which means a red or Tanakh, which is Torah, Navi'im and Ketuvim. Torah is the law.

Navi'im, Navi' is a prophet and Ketuvim are the writings. Right. Same thing we have in our English Bibles, except they're not necessarily in the same order. Right. And then the Protestants are, the traditional number is about 39 instead of 24, like the Jewish, but it retains the order of the Septuagint, but the text is based on the Hebrew Bible.

Okay. Septuagint has more books. Just if you're wondering what is that? The Jewish Old Testament, then the Jewish Canon. Then the Hebrew Canon. Yeah. Oh, the Jewish Canon. That's fine to say that too.

Okay. So, but the Roman Catholic, the tradition number of books is 49, so 10 more. And it is based on the Alexandrian Canon of the Septuagint. I told you, Septuagint has more books. Right.

Right. And the order of books kind of varies. It is based on current editions, such as the Jerusalem Bible and the New American Bible. And the appendix of the Latin Vulgate contains three as the third Esdras, four Esdras and the prayer of Manasseh. Are some apocryphal works included in that?

Roman Catholic Canon? Okay. Yes, of course. That's the Alexandrian Canon. So the Alexandrian Canon has the other books. Got it. Okay.

But then there's also the Orthodox Canon. This is the traditional, the number is about 53. Wow. So of course it's more, but nothing like 100,000 more pages. Right.

You know, nothing like that and more. So 53 is based on the larger versions of the Septuagint. So Septuagint is the one that kind of throws that wrench into thing.

Okay. But the Septuagint, if you go by the Alexandrian, 49, but if you go by the larger version than 53, okay. So that's what's happening here. And all this is Old Testament specifically, right. That we're talking about so far. Right. New Testament is the same. Gotcha. Okay. New Testament is the same across all kinds.

Across the board. Got it. Right. There are other books, and like we will talk about that in a moment, but it's nothing like the Old Testament is where the problem lies in these more books.

Okay. And the problem is coming from the Septuagint. What is the Septuagint? It is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

Right. It was the writings that were used by the people living in Egypt, the Jewish people living in Egypt who felt like their children were losing the language and no longer in touch with their, their roots. And so they translated the Masoretic text, the Hebrew, not a Masoretic, the Hebrew text into Greek. And, but then they also added some of the books to it. Okay.

But then kind of moving along here. So that's the Orthodox, the Orthodox Bible refers to the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. Then you have the extra books found in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons that are not part of the Jewish canning, as I just mentioned to you, according to Josephus, the 24 were it for the Jewish canon.

Jewish means Hebrew is what I mean here. Okay. Okay. The Essenes from Qumran only cite from the Jewish canonical books and only wrote commentaries on them.

The Dead Sea Scrolls people. Right. Only the 24.

Okay. Which is the 39. So you won't find it, like in the Dead Sea Scrolls, you won't find anything that's outside of that.

Like Susanna or Maccabees or Manasseh and none of that. You said, you said the 24, which is the 39. Is that, was that because books like First and Second Kings would be one? Okay.

They've been divided up. Gotcha. So that's what you have there. Philo, I just mentioned Philo by the way, 20 BC to 40 AD, the Jewish scholar only cites from the canonical books. Okay. So also the New Testament authors stick to the canonical books. Now, Jude does quote from first Enoch, but it was not claimed to be canonical. So it was just, it was just a writing, like a, like a useful writing that he quoted. Right.

I'm okay with reading some of the books in the Septuagint Canon. I'm okay with that. They give us some information. There's some value there, but I don't put them on the same level as the 24 or the 39. Right. Which are the same. They're good reading, but they're not God's word. Right. We can learn some things. And I mean, you know, when you can talk about the fallen angels and all that, some information is given that's helpful. The extra books were added by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox as important to certain Jewish people. So they added them into their Canon.

Okay. The New Testament Canon of 27 have remained the same. The ones claimed recently are Gnostic or heretical books. And they don't count.

There were some that were claimed recently. I mean like Bart Ehrman and others talk about, you know, Hey, why don't we include the Acts of Mary Magdalene or the Gospel of Thomas? What's wrong with that? Trying to muddy up the waters. Right. But they're Gnostic books. They came much later. Yeah.

They don't have the same kind of Septuagint versus the Hebrew Canon or the Jewish Canon. That was not even an issue. They were like, you know, these are messed up. They didn't pass through that filter of what has to make those books.

I got you. Yeah. It's interesting to me that the New Testament Canon was never disputed. It was never, never contested in the way that the same way that the Old Testament was.

But then again, you didn't have the same issue with the Septuagint coming in for the New Testament books. Right. Cool. That's awesome.

That's amazing. Even with the different canons, it's so crystal clear what the message of Christianity is. It's so crystal clear what the message of the Bible is. Big difference. Buddhist religious book, no personal God.

Bible, God wants to know you. Right. History is cyclical.

History is linear. There is no creation. Yes, there is a creation. Main problem is suffering. Main problem is sin. That's true.

The Bible says sin. Ultimate goal is just escape or nirvana. Ultimate goal is for you to have a relationship with God.

That's what he wants to have with you. Yeah. It all happened under a tree, right? With Buddhism. Yeah. It all happened on a tree.

That's right. No judgment, but there is a day appointed by which God is going to judge this world by the man, Christ Jesus. No life after death. Oh, there is eternal life. Be lambs to yourself. Shine the light of Jesus. Without Buddha, there is still Buddhism.

But there's no Christianity without Christ. Nope. Nope. Beautiful. Amen. So helpful for us. If you guys enjoyed today's topic, if you have questions about the canon of Scripture or how it compares to other books, other religious writings, let us know by sending us a text at 252-582-5028. You can visit us online at cleartodayshow.com. And don't forget, you can partner with us financially on that same website. Every gift that you give goes not only to building up this radio show, but countless other ministries for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on Clear Read Today.