Answers Bible Curriculum Year 3 Quarter 1 Lesson 6
This week in Sunday school, we consider some of the criticisms often made against the New Testament and how we should respond. We focus on the claim that the New Testament arbitrarily contains some early Christian writings but not others.
In the first part of our class, we’ll watch a video presentation from Answers in Genesis on why there are only 27 books in the New Testament. This video will both review and explain further some of the topics we’ve broached this quarter:
1. When were the books of the New Testament written?
2. When were these books recognized as a divinely authored canon?
3. Why didn’t some books make it into the canon?
4. How were these books accurately preserved for us?
(Note: The presentation is not included in our online video, but can be found at https://answersingenesis.org/media/video/bible/why-66/, starting at the 16:35 mark.)
In the second part of our class, we’ll examine excerpts from two rejected Gospels and see for ourselves why such writings were recognized as false scriptures.
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it is in a way a review for us today we’re going to be reviewing and expanding on some ideas that we’ve begun to discuss in previous lessons as we consider today’s topic New Testament attacks before we get to that let’s review more specifically what we talked about last week last week we outlined the life of Christ Christ’s first coming divides into three main parts is preparation for ministry the ministry itself the three-and-a-half year ministry and then the culmination of that ministry at the end of his life and at the end of his time on earth using dr. Keith’s dr. keith essex harmony of the gospels we broke down these three main phases of christ’s ministry into nine specific points nine points of a timeline begins with Jesus’s birth around six to four BC and his growing up and then his baptism in temptation which take place shortly before his ministry begins probably around AD 25 to 26 first year of his ministry where the first phase of Jesus’s ministry is one of obscurity there’s a year of obscurity followed by a year public favor and then finally a year of opposition his ministry culminates with the Passion Week probably taking place about AD 28 to 29 the end of the Passion Week Jesus is crucified but our eighth point on the timeline he also rises again and appears to his disciples there’s 40 more days on earth and then his ascension and there we have it we have the life of Christ but back to today’s topic like many other parts of the Bible the New Testament is under constant attack today from skeptics and liberal pastors scholars and theologians by the way when I say liberal or when Christians refer to liberal theologians they don’t mean liberal in a political viewpoint but actually a theological one a theologically liberal Christian is basically someone who claims to be a Christian but doesn’t believe the Bible you might wonder how is that possible how can you be a Christian to not believe the but that’s what liberal Christianity is it’s not it’s not really a foundation to stand on at that point but they try anyway skeptics and liberals often attack the New Testament with claims like the following here’s one books of the New Testament we’re not written by who they say they were the authors were either not the original apostles or their associates or if they were the documents have been heavily edited by later Christians so really it’s a multiplicity of authors and if you really want to get back to the original author apostle apostolic tradition you need to be a highly trained scholar and it’s not possible for a regular layman to do so next one criticism another one would be something like this this is similar the books the New Testament were written long after the fact of the events of Jesus’s life Christians were recording new traditions of the Apostles rather than the Apostles writing themselves and really Christianity only gradually understood itself and its message with competing versions of Christianity interacting with each other in the first few centuries it’s only three or four hundred years after Christ that Christians decided what they really wanted Christianity to be a third claim because the new to only have the copies and there been so many years of these copies and so many copies that thousands of errors must have crept in and corrupted the text you can’t trust the New Testament since it was basically created by a game of telephone one person only getting partially what the previous person said so we can’t really trust the copy is the New Testament or the versions that we have today and then one more example another claim against the New Testament New Testament canon was created by Constantine and other church leaders of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 those leaders really weren’t trying to determine what was the Word of God they simply were trying to create a religious tradition that serve their own interests and allow them to keep their positions of power therefore false scriptures might have been included in the New Testament while true scriptures may have been left out probably we’re left out that is if there really is such a thing as true Scripture so perhaps you’ve heard claims like these before of course they’re completely false and even in our past five lessons we’ve seen some of the reasons why these claims are false but let’s hear now another defense of the trustworthiness of the New Testament from Answers in Genesis the first half of today’s class we’re going to watch a 35 minute video clip from a lecture given by Brian Edwards Brian Edwards is a Christian writer lecturer and apologist and he did a special presentation for Answers in Genesis this clip is from a longer video called why why does 66 books of the Bible we’re only going to look at the section that deals with the New Testament why 27 why are there only 27 books of the New Testament how were those 27 determined why weren’t others included and why should we trust those that were Edwards is going to give us some answers if you’d like to take notes on this video presentation you can follow the headings or the points that are now up on the screen these are the points that he’s going to be talking about in his viewing anything I’ll just be listening along with you and I’ll come back and say some things after we watch the video by the way this is only for the first half of class and the second half of class we’re going to do an activity related to something that we hear in the video all right so Andrew people in the sound booth I think we’re ready to start the clip hopefully you’ve seen after watching that video and hearing him speak that the claims and attacks there of the New Testament so many of these claims that we hear have absolutely no basis in reality some questions and objections are based off of genuine misunderstanding the the majority of the time as he was even explaining in the beginning these attacks and these criticisms they’re based not on talk to me afterwards afterwards he does make the claim there is a little bit ambiguous in beginning the video whether he believes that all the books of the Bible were written the New Testament were written for ad 70 not we wouldn’t take that position at this church some Christians do take that position but just one to mention that now Edwards mentions in the video and this is we’re going to transition now to the second part of our class an activity Edward mentions in the video that early Christians examine various documents that presented themselves as Scripture but were actually not these Christians were often able to quickly and confidently dismiss such works as pseudepigrapha that is false writings fake writings how did they do it how were they able to study and reject these works so quickly well let’s try it out ourselves we’re going to actually look at some of the two works two excerpts from two works that did not make it into the New Testament candidate an apostle or an apostolic associate do we know anybody like that named Thomas I don’t believe he’s the brother of Jesus but he was one of the disciples and we do think of him as doubting Thomas he’s one of the original twelve disciples which of course is a little bit unfair of a term because all the disciples had trouble believing after Jesus’s resurrection but yes Thomas was one of the apostles and if you’re going to write so to pick a foot Thomas since he didn’t write any of the New Testament might be a good one to choose but maybe Thomas did write this maybe this is apostolic and we just are missing it in our Bibles well let’s actually read this text and see if let’s see if we notice anything that stands out here’s a little from the infancy gospel of thomas i thomas the israelite tell unto you even all the brethren and are of the gentiles to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our lord jesus christ and his mighty deeds even all that he did when he was born in our land wherever the beginning is thus he mentions a little bit and then he goes on another section after that again he went through the village and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder and jesus was provoked and said unto him thou shalt not finished i course and immediately he fell down and I’d but certainly when they saw what was done when they saw what was done said once was this young child born for that every word of his is an accomplished work the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph and blamed him saying thou that has such a child can’t snot dwell with us in the village or do thou teach him to bless and not the curse for he slay our children okay does something stick out to you from this narrative is being inconsistent with the writings of the New Testament yes something should what is it yeah Rob yeah that’s true yes certainly the attitude towards children is displayed by Jesus year is very different though remember Jesus was supposed to be a child himself at this point but yeah the fact that Jesus kills the kid here is pretty significant and we could point to a number of sections of the the New Testament and even the whole Bible to say this is not consistent this is contradictory and I’ll go through this quickly except you’re running a little bit short on time but Jesus was sinless and this sure looks like a sinful vengeful selfish act he runs into Jesus and Jesus is going to kill him canal’s a curse that kills him second Corinthians 5:21 says he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf Jesus can’t sin even as a child and we know from disturbing on the mouth Jesus specifically taught about not taking vengeance even when you’ve been genuinely wronged Matthew 5:39 2:38 you have heard that it was said an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth but I say to you do not resist an evil person whoever slaps you on one right cheek turn the other to him also as a a 53:7 also says that he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he did not open his mouth that’s the opposite of what we see in this supposed gospel he gets bumped and opens his mouth and kills the kid we could say more Jesus never hurt anyone in the Gospels save perhaps when he made a whip of cords and cleansed the temple well though one could argue that the whip was actually for the animals and not for people we don’t see Jesus doing this kind of thing anywhere else even we don’t even see Jesus performing an act of judgment at all in the Gospels he warns of judgment but he never actually causes judgment to come during his first Advent and when the disciples offered to judge on his behalf do you want us to call down fire from heaven man what Jesus did he rebuked them says that’s not her probably not explicitly come given what he said I some debate about the particular verse there but he Luc’s his disciples that’s not what he was intending to do so just even from this one extra you can see how relatively easy it is to reject this gospel as false to point to just totally get rid of it I don’t even need to read the rest of work to recognize it’s fake it’s furious this wasn’t from God and this isn’t from Thomas let’s look at another example this one you might have heard of the Gospel of Judas Judas has always enjoyed a certain popularity as an antihero talking about Judas Iscariot now but maybe we got it all wrong maybe Judas was the gospel writer too well let’s see what the Gospel of Judas says got two slides here is what supposedly Judas rope one day he asked Jesus with with his disciples in Judea and he found them gathered together and seated in pious observance when you approached his disciples and gathered together and seated and not he proaches disciples gathered together and seated in offering a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread he laughed the disciples said to him master why are you laughing at our prayer of thanksgiving what we have done or we have done what is right he answered and said to them I’m not laughing at you you are not doing this because of you own will because it is through this that your God will be praised they said master you are the son of God jesus said to them how do you know me truly I say to you no generation of the people that are among you will know me when his disciples heard this they started getting angry and infuriated and began blaspheming against him in their hearts Jesus observed their lack of understanding he said to them why is this agitation led you to anger your God who is within you and have provoked you to anger within your souls that any one of you who is strong enough among human beings bring out the perfect human and stand before my face they all said we have the strength but their spirits did not dare to stand before him except for Judas Iscariot he was able to stand before him but he could not look him in the eyes and he turned his face away Judas said to him I know who you are and where you have come from you are from the immortal realm of Barbelo and I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you okay so there are a number of things in this passage that are a little little off you may notice that the style of the passage though some of the language is very similar to what we hear in the Gospels nevertheless there are a number of elements here that they’re just very off and again I’ll go through this quickly myself since we’re short on time we see Jesus laughing had his disciples especially when they’re praying that’s totally inconsistent with the rest the New Testament Jesus actually has never recorded as laughing at all in the New Testament nor does he rebuke or mock truly righteous works we see the disciples getting angry at Jesus and blaspheming him in their hearts this again we never hear this kind of description in the Gospels the Pharisees blaspheme Jesus some describes blaspheme Jesus in their hearts or in their words but the disciples never get angry at him not even Judas is recorded as feeling any type of anger or blasphemous thought against Jesus we have this weird reference to our God the disciples say our God and Jesus refers to your God’s speaking to the disciples as if they weren’t the same again this is not something we see in the Gospels Jesus does use the phrase your God one time in John 20 verse 17 but that’s when he’s speaking to Mary Magdalene using the phrase my god and your God so we don’t have that weird distinction in other New Testament works but probably the two greatest inconsistencies here is that Judas is portrayed as a great and most worthy person he’s even implied here to be the perfect human that Jesus is supposedly asking for now this is the opposite of what we see in the Gospels where Jesus is clearly described as a thief one who pilfered the money box that the disciples had he’s the betrayer of Jesus and he killed himself because he felt so guilty over his sins this is not the perfect human and then we have this reference to the realm of Barbelo what is that about what is that how is jesus supposed to be from there certain we never hear that term another parts the Bible and there’s a very good reason for that because it comes from a form of Gnostic Christianity Barbelo is a title that the Gnostics used to describe the first emanation of God God has multiple emanations Barbella was a female male God from whom all the other gods came into the world Gnostic Christianity if we can even call it Christianity featured a pantheon of gods and we have a reference to one of those gods here so this book gets out of control pretty quickly and again we don’t really need to read anymore to do the same thing that the early church Christians did which is reject this as spurious this is not apostolic this is not divine this is not Scripture this doesn’t fit at all both of these works the infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas were relatively early both are mentioned by ironies the same avenues you just heard about by ad 180 so they were around but they were both false writings easily seen by the early church to be false and we can see why now we’ve only looked at two of these two topography but the process we went through is really the same process that all early Christians went through when they scrutinize the different texts to discern what really came from the Apostles and what did not if we’re again there really is nothing to the claim that the New Testament was composed arbitrarily that some works got left out some work Scott put in for no good reason we can say with confidence that the only you know we can say with confidence that the New Testament is only the 27 books and we recognize today God graciously preserved this Testament for us that we too like those who first showed it have repents leave and follow the one true God at the one and only God now one question you might have regarding all this these false Gospels and such is why why create false Gospels tried to semmen ate them if you the author know that it’s false this is a good question it’s a hard one to answer we can’t know for sure why people did what they did we can suggest some reasons ultimately it comes down to one of two mindsets they either knew it was false and they were trying to deceive and exploit others others who might believe what they wrote or they somehow convinced themselves that what they wrote was not false either they were bringing together some religious tradition they heard and combining it with Christianity true Christianity they wanted it to be true so badly that they believed it was true they had some sort of experience or dream or imaginative or some sort of what they thought was a vision and therefore recorded it we don’t know they probably thought that they were writing something that was somehow true or maybe it was demonic demonically inspired we know certainly indirectly demons were involved Satan hates the truth you always want to confuse and suppress God’s truth and so that probably had a role in the creation of these false works but whenever the reason that these originally being created we can praise the Lord that his word is what triumph despite efforts to confuse suppress and destroy God’s Word his promise has its fulfillment heaven and earth will pass away but our Lord’s word will never pass away okay that mmm got through everything that I was looking to get through any quick questions before we close yeah Rob yeah yeah I totally agree Rob when we just ambiguously or morbidly like yeah they were writings that rejected because people didn’t know they were Scripture it’s really helpful to actually look at these things that didn’t make it in because you’re like oh well obviously there’s a clear difference between those things that that are Scripture and are not and it doesn’t take a scholar or someone who’s have been initiated in some special way to recognize the difference totally give other questions definitely email me or talk to me we’re gonna wind down now what is the takeaway from today’s lesson well we see again that God’s Word is trustworthy and not only can be believed but it must be believed the Old and New Testaments form a book unlike any other book divine and errant sufficient authoritative Bible we must pay attention to this word or as Hebrew says we risk bringing sorrow and judgment on ourselves the world will continue to bring its attacks and assert its falsehoods against the Bible in order to confirm their own sinful way but we do have the answers to their attacks more than that we have the answer to their fundamental problem they’re destructive unbelief in self-righteousness that answer is the good news of salvation and Jesus by faith alone believing on what he’s accomplished on behalf of sinful men that they might be saved by his righteousness that is the word that we share that is the word that we are to be ready to share next week we begin looking at the birth narrative of Jesus as we see how it connects with Old Testament prophecy that’s right kada thank you for this time thank you for the confidence we have in your word and thank you that you have orchestrated the events of history and in the preservation of your gospel so that we can believe it today help us to be diligent to share it bold give us a love for people and give us give us great confidence in your word as we have so much warrant for so that we can so that we can declare it in Jesus name Amen all right