What is the Bible?

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0:00 The Understanding the Scriptures is a production of the United States, and the United States. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, this evening as we open up your word, and as we pour over these pages of what you have given to us as a gift, we ask that you would clear our minds of all of those distractions that remain with us, all those uncompleted chores, that shopping list that remains on the counter at home.

1:12 Lord, we ask for you to clear our minds, to settle our hearts, and to prepare us for all that you have to give us this evening. I ask for an increase in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Help us understand better those mysteries that you have revealed to us. And let's pray the prayer that I gave to you guys. Lord Jesus Christ, be present now, and let your Holy Spirit bow, all hearts and love and truth today, to hear your word and keep your way. Give us the grace to grasp your word, that we may do what we have heard. Instruct us through the Scriptures, Lord, as we draw near, O God adored.

2:07 To God the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit, three in one, to you, O blessed Trinity, be praised throughout eternity. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay. So, tonight we're going to be covering chapter one of your textbook, Understanding the Scriptures. And I'm going to go into further detail and more depth than this chapter actually has on face value. So, you can read the chapter, and you'll get some of what I'm going to say tonight, but I'm going to try and go down deeper. I'm going to try and not just snorkel, but try and scuba dive, and try and give you more than what the textbook gives you. That way you're able to get the more out of this study. And the title for chapter one is, What is the Bible?

3:02 What is the Bible? And I'm going to divide tonight's study up into two main sections. The first half of tonight, we're going to talk about the inspired nature of sacred scripture. What makes the Bible different from any other book? And even the word Bible itself comes from the Greek word for book, biblios. So, Bible itself means book. So, when we say, you know, take out your Bibles, it's like saying take out your books. You know, we're using the Greek word. And so, that's going to be the first half. We're going to talk about the inspired nature of sacred scripture, and what this means practically for us as Catholic Christians. You know, it's great to have a study. It's great to come here and to study about scripture, but how does this apply to our lives?

3:54 And the second half of tonight is going to, we're going to cover the covenant, because all throughout scripture, all throughout the Bible, you see this theme of the covenant arising over and over and over again. And sometimes, the word covenant isn't even used in the Bible, but it's presumed and assumed by the author who's writing sacred scripture. And he's speaking in covenantal language and is assuming that you have a covenantal worldview, that you understand what a covenant is, and that you understand how that affects the story narrative. So, that's how we're going to split up tonight. Okay, let's turn our Bibles open to 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 10. A lot of times, you'll see this verse opened up, but people will have you turn to 2 Timothy 3, 16.

4:52 But we're going to read 2 Timothy in its immediate context, which, let's go to verse 10 in 2 Timothy. This is after Colossians, after 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy. It's before Titus, before Philemon, or Philemon, before Hebrews. 2 Timothy 3, verse 10. And this is Paul exhorting his disciple, that he's been discipling, Timothy. Timothy is a priest. He's a presbyter. And the word priest comes from the Greek word presbyteros. Presbyteros is a Greek word that means elder.

5:43 And so, it was the term that they gave to those leaders in the early Christian community who had been ordained by the laying on of the hands. And today, we get the English word priest from presbyter. Just take out some of the letters and you get priest. Okay. So, Timothy was being discipled by St. Paul. And so, St. Paul is writing to Timothy, you know, encouraging him, exhorting him, you know, to edify. To edify means to build up. It doesn't mean to, you know, to chop down. So, sometimes you hear edification and it could have a negative connotation. But whenever we say edify, it's a positive thing. It means to build up. So, this building had to be edified. You know, it had to be built up. Okay. Verse 10. You have followed my teaching, way of life, purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.

6:48 And if you guys ever want to read about these persecutions, this is in Acts of the Apostles. You can read Acts and it will talk about how Paul went to Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. Yet, from all these things, the Lord delivered me. In fact, all who want to live religiously in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. I have a quick question, Don. Don, is in verse 12, what does your translation say? How does verse 12 go? And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Okay. All who desire to live godly, godly or religiously in Christ Jesus, will be persecuted. But wicked people and charlatans will go from bad to worse. Deceivers and deceived.

7:38 But you remain faithful to what you have learned and believed. Because you know from whom you have learned it. Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed. Because you know from whom you have learned it. And that from infancy, you have known the sacred scriptures. Which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God. And is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness. So that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead.

8:35 And by his appearing and his kingly power, to proclaim the word. Be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Okay, so in verse 16, St. Paul says all scripture is inspired by God. And inspired is what pretty much every English translation that I know of translates the original Greek as. As you know, Paul didn't write in English. He was writing in Greek. And in Greek, he uses a very special word to talk about scripture.

9:27 He says all scripture is... Let's see here. I'm going to go ahead and write it up here on the board for you. It's phaop, T-H-E-O-P. This is a transliteration. So the original Greek characters, you know, they didn't have English characters. So we have to take each Greek character and take an English character that sounds like that Greek character. And this is what we call transliterating a word. Transliterating. So it's phaop, new, N-Y, I'm sorry, T-H-E-O-P-N-E-U-S-T-O-S. And it sounds like phaop neustos.

10:20 And it comes from two words. Theos. And Pneos. And the word theos, do you guys know what theos means? God, right. Very good. Yeah, like theology, the study of God. Theos means God. And Pneos means to breathe. And so this word, theop neustos, is a word that literally means God breathed. So if we want to translate what Paul really said in the Greek, he said, all scripture is God breathed. Like this image of God, just kind of like breathing life into the scriptures.

11:17 And this is very important because back in Genesis, I believe it was in Genesis chapter 2, verse 3, if I remember correctly. I may be incorrect in that. God breathed. God breathed the breath of life into Adam, and Adam became a living being. And of course, this didn't happen to any of the other animals. No other animal had the breath of life breathed into him, and they became a living being. But were the animals alive? Yes. So the Hebrew author, when he says that God breathed the breath of life into Adam, we're supposed to think that Adam received a special gift of life, of animation, above just his created state, like the animals. And this is what theologians have seen as sanctifying grace, the divine life of, participation in the divine life of God. Well, if this happened to Adam, and this is what, you know, Paul knows Genesis.

12:12 He knows the Genesis narrative very well. Because we see elsewhere in his writings, he's quoting the Genesis narrative. He really knows its logic. He knows the text very well. Because this is his Torah. This is what he studied as a Jew. This was part of his training. And so when he says all scripture is God breathed, he's using this image from Genesis, chapter 2. And so, in this idea of scripture being God breathed, this is where we get the term inspiration from. And as Christians, when we say that scripture is God breathed, we believe that it's, you know, as Adam received this gift of life, so scripture has this divine quality, kind of like Adam did. Adam had a share in the divine life, so scripture has a share in God's divineness.

13:07 And I'm going to explain this in further detail what this means. It means that scripture, all scripture, now, when Paul was talking here to Timothy, he said, from infancy, you know the scriptures that are God breathed. And so when Paul is talking to Timothy, there is no written New Testament. I mean, Paul's writing it as he's writing to Timothy. He's writing the New Testament. Paul probably didn't even know that he was doing that. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have called the Galatians stupid people, you know, in Galatians. He probably wouldn't have been so rude if he knew that he was writing inspired scripture. But who knows? You know, this is the mystery of God, how he uses human authors. But scripture is, is, it has divine authorship.

14:06 Scripture is written by God. Okay? It's written by God. God is, God is the primary author of sacred scripture. Now, you know, the Trinity, we attribute this action to the Holy Spirit. In a Hebrew sense, God's breath, the word for breath, is, is the same word as spirit. So when God breathes, it has the connotation of the spirit. And it's the same thing with wind. The same word for wind is the same one used for spirit. So whenever you see breath, wind, spirit, you're talking about the same thing in a Hebrew frame of mind. And so when God breathes into scripture, it's God breathed, you have the sense of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God indwelling the scriptures.

15:02 And so God is the primary author. And so we attribute this to the third person of the blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, even though that, you know, it's, it's the entire Trinity's work. But we, we give an attribution to the Holy Spirit. So we see that the Holy Spirit is the primary author. And simultaneously, the human writers are the instrumental authors. Instrumental authors. So these are technical words by which we are describing the reality of sacred scripture. And so the human authors wrote freely. It was not as if they were, you know, just sitting in a dark room with candlelight and a pen and they were waiting for God to say something.

15:57 And God said, Paul, I want for you to write to Timothy. Okay, God, I'm ready. Tell him all scripture is theopneustos. Okay, God, I'm writing it down. That's, that's called dictation. That is not how the scripture was written. Now, sometimes that happened. For instance, Jesus in the book of Revelation tells John, write down what you see. That happens in the book of Revelation. And so John writes down what he sees in a certain sense. But for the vast majority of sacred scripture, it's not like that. Rather, the human author didn't even know he was writing inspired scripture. He was just writing freely with his own free will. He was just, you know, writing as he saw fit. And so he used his own literary genres. He used his own customs, his own language, his own manner of speaking. The way he saw the world was the way he wrote.

16:49 He did this freely. And God, this is what God does with the divine providence. Is God in providence takes up all of our freedom, all of our actions. And he uses our, and he works with our freedom to accomplish his purposes. So we can say that God's will is being born out in human history. You know, God does certain things, but he uses our free choices. So we learn in the Old Testament that when, when Babylon destroys Jerusalem and takes, it takes the Jews, the, the Judahites, the Benjaminites, and the Levites takes these Israelites into captivity. Scripture tells us that this is God punishing Israel. But a Babylonian would say, no, we're not serving as God's instrument. We're just, we're just getting loot.

17:38 We're just conquering Israel. But the prophets say, no, God, God is using the free actions of the Babylonians to punish Israel. So this is how providence works. Providence doesn't work against our freedom. We have this idea that, well, if God's going to get his way, then we're not getting our way. But no, God is able to get his way even while we have our way. And this is the great mystery of providence. And this is what happens in sacred scripture. The human authors are writing freely as they choose. And at the same time, they're writing only what God wants. And they're not writing what God does not want. So everything is, is authored by God as the primary author. And so, for this reason, all scripture is inspired. You know, we saw that in, in, uh, second Timothy chapter three, verse 16, all scripture is inspired.

18:34 So, we do not believe that just, you know, just those parts of scripture that pertain to, you know, faith. You know, if there's a part of scripture that says, you know, God is like this. Okay, that, that's telling us about God. So that has to pertain to faith. But if it tells us about some battle, no, that's not inspired. Now, all of scripture is inspired. Every, every, everything God wants, everything that it says is inspired. All of scripture. Not just those things pertaining to faith statements. Or if it just tells you how to live your life, morality. But all of scripture is inspired. All of scripture. And what I'd like to do is, well, I wanted to read from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but I forgot my copy. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to give you guys a reference.

19:24 I'd like for you guys to, actually, there is a Catechism on the back. Let me go back here and grab it. What we're going to do is, we're going to look in the Catechism, uh, between paragraphs 101 and 104. And I'm going to specifically read from paragraph 101 and 104. And this is where the Catechism talks about what we believe about scripture. Okay, so in paragraph 101, the Catechism says, In order to reveal himself to men, in the condescension of his goodness, God speaks to them in human words. Indeed, the words of God expressed in the words of men are in every way like human language. Just as the word of the Eternal Father, when he took on himself, the flesh of human weakness became like men.

20:23 So, the Catechism is comparing the inspiration of scripture to the Incarnation. Just as the Divine Son of God, the Word, the Logos, took on human flesh and became like us in all things, but what? Sin, but sin. This is, uh, this is, um, in, Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 15. Jesus was like us in all things, but sin. Hebrews 4, 15. So, just as God condescended in the Incarnation and took on everything about us, I mean, except for sin. I mean, Jesus pooped as a baby.

21:14 He, he had B.O. He, I'm sure sometimes he didn't look so great, you know, after maybe a mud fight with, with his cousins. You know, and, and it's the same way with scripture. God condescends to our level and speaks to us, not in angelic words, but in the simple, everyday, mundane words that we use. And just as God took our, came down to our humanity and took it up by, by fusing it with his divinity. Not to be confused with the divinity, not to be destroyed or subsumed by the divinity, but Jesus was pure 100% man and pure 100% divinity. Never to be separated ever again. This is what we call the hypostatic union. Just as, just as God did that in order to glorify our humanity and raise it up to himself in the resurrection and ascension.

22:09 So God comes down and he uses our words to let us, to reveal his innermost mysteries, his plans and who he is as God. Now we believe in only one God, but who is God? What are his attributes? What's his nature? What's his inner life like? This one God. Well, we find out that this one God is three persons, not three gods, but three persons. And it's, it's so hard for us to understand. So we have to use these human words like persons. And sometimes if persons gives us the wrong idea, then we're using the wrong word. We need to use a different word or we need to redefine person because it's, it's such a, it's such a profound mystery because we don't believe in three gods. And so God uses human language to reveal his, his innermost mysteries to us. Now, I also want to read, let's see here.

23:04 So that was, uh, this is what we call divine accommodation, divine accommodation, God coming down to us. And just as Jesus was without sin in our humanity, Jesus never sinned, not even once, not even one little time did Jesus ever sin. Why? Because he's God. He can't, it's impossible for him. Well, in the same way, when God inspires sacred scripture, it's without error. Because God can't tell a lie. If God is inspiring it and if he's writing it, he can't say, he can't say something that's false. And so when we're reading scripture, there are tons of apparent contradictions in the Bible. And, and oftentimes atheists or Muslims who want to disprove the Bible will just list the contradictions one after another, after another.

24:00 And notice I didn't call them contradictions. I called them apparent contradictions. Apparent, they appear to be contradictions. Sometimes when you're studying, you're using biblical archaeology and you're studying the original manuscripts, you, you can actually prove that it's not an error. You can actually show, no, actually that wasn't an error for this reason. The author meant to use this particular number symbolically, not literally. And so another author can talk about the same event with a different number, a different number of men. Because the number is a symbolic number, not a literal number. Sometimes you find out that the manuscript that you were, that you were basing your interpretation upon was a later manuscript. And they find an earlier, more reliable manuscript that's closer to the original autograph, what the actual author had actually written, not a copy of a copy of a copy.

24:54 And they find this older manuscript and it clears up the misunderstanding. It's, it's more accurate. Is a lot of times the, actually most all the time, the biblical writers wrote from their own phenomenological perspective. And I like to use this particular analogy. It's like turning on, what, what channel is news come on here? Do you guys, do we get reception at all? CBS? Let's, let's say you turn to CBS and you turn on the nightly newscast and you're waiting. PBS, no, let's do CBS.

25:43 And, and so we're going, you know, we're going through the news channel where you're waiting for the weather to come on, waiting for the weather. Finally, the weather comes on. And this guy who probably has, you know, he has his, his master's in meteorology from Texas A&M University. So, you know, he's going to be really accurate, right? And, and he is, he didn't go to the University of Texas. And so he's, he's presenting the weather. And he says, oh, and let's look at tomorrow's weather. Well, uh, the sun will rise at 6.47 a.m. Whoa, hold on. Call the news station. Call his professors at Texas A&M. He must have had a bad education. We all know that we're not geocentrists. That the sun does not rise. We know that the earth turns. What is this guy talking about? Of course he wouldn't act like that, because what is he doing? He's speaking from a phenomenological perspective. It looks like the sun is rising.

26:32 We still use that type of language today. In our enlightened scientific age, we use phenomenological language all the time. And so what we mean to affirm, what we mean to affirm is not always literally what we're saying. And so when we're reading the biblical narrative, we've got to remember that they wrote with a completely different, I mean, we, we write, we have a worldview that's very rationalistic and enlightened, so to speak. And so we want to write history just as it happened. But back then they had what's called a mythopoeic worldview. Mythopoeic. It combines the two words of myth and poetry. And they wrote with symbolism, and they would rhyme certain words. Like, for instance, when the author of Genesis talks about the creation of Adam, he says, God formed man from the dust of the earth.

27:31 Well, in Hebrew, man is Adam, and dust of the earth is Adamah. So there's a play on words between Adam and Adamah. It's like poetry when they're writing. And we can totally miss this if we're just reading the narrative in English. Okay. So I think I've gone through that quite a bit. Now what I want to do is I want to read the paragraph 104 of the Catechism. And this is beautiful. And so why does God do this? Why does God inspire sacred scripture? Why did he do this? Why did he go through all this effort? Well, actually, it wasn't any effort for God, because it doesn't take effort for God, because God is God, and he's infinite, and he's omnipotent. So it's not like he gets tired. Though he did have to rest on the seventh day. So scripture has us there, I guess.

28:21 In paragraph 104, this is what the Catechism says. In sacred scripture, the church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, but as what it really is, the word of God. In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talks with them. Have any of you guys ever had God talk to you? You think so? I mean, has God ever come to you and said, Caroline, I love you? Now, he did that, but did God ever do that to you?

29:17 Did he? I mean, just tell me, did God ever come to you and say that to you? Not like that. In other ways. Maybe through a dream or something. Right. But, you know, God has told you, I love you. He has. Just as real as me sitting here talking to you today. But he doesn't do it, most of the time, through just verbal dictation. Just, you know, we call this locutions. You know, he doesn't do it through a locution to most people. Though some people, mystics, do receive that. They actually hear words. And they're not crazy. This is why we call them mystics and not psychotics. Is they receive these locutions. Or they'll receive an apparition. Okay, so this does happen.

30:05 But normally, God speaks to us in the sacred scripture. So, the practical reality of the inspiration of sacred scripture is that God wrote us a love letter. This, the scripture, is God talking to us. And you know how I said that when the Son of God took up our human nature in order to elevate it and to glorify it at the right hand of God the Father in the resurrection and ascension? Well, in the same way, when sacred scripture is read, it is powerful. It has the power to convert our hearts. Some of the most famous conversion stories in all of human history, like that of Augustine, was where he heard this voice take up and read. So, he opens up the scriptures and starts reading.

30:56 And he gets cut to the heart. The book of Hebrews says the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, dividing bone and marrow. It pierces the heart. It has power. This is God speaking to us. And so, this is why we put so much pomp into the liturgy of the word at the first half of Mass. This is the reason that we enthrone the Gospels up on the altar, or the deacon processes in with the Gospels up high above his head, and we incense the Gospels. And then he takes the Gospels over to the ambo. He lays it down, an especially built ambo with all these ornate carvings. And he lays it on the ambo, opens it up, and proclaims. And we all stand for it, for the Gospel. We all stand.

31:43 Because, in ancient times, to stand was a sign of reverence. You know, when the president walks in the room, or the judge, if you're in the court, what does everybody do? Please rise. You know, we all stand at a reverence. So, we do this for the Gospel. Because, and the Gospel is going to change our lives. The Word of God has power. And so, when I was taught in graduate school, that whenever I teach from Sacred Scripture, never just to sit down, cross my legs, and read from Scripture. But always to stand up, grab the Bible, and to proclaim the Scriptures. Because this is something, this is God speaking. This is not just some great historical narrative that some guy wrote a long time ago. But this is divinely inspired. So, this has great significance for us. So, the Church has, wrote a document at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

32:37 And it was written, it was promulgated on November the 18th, 1965. So, all the bishops of the Church are together in Rome. And on November the 18th, 1965, they promulgated the dogmatic, dogmatic constitution, constitution on divine revelation. And the short title for it is Dei Verbum. D-E-I-V-E-R-B-U-M. Two different words, Dei Verbum, which means God's Word, or Word of God. Here's a copy of Dei Verbum.

33:30 It's very, very small. Very, very flimsy. Very, I mean, you can read this in one sitting. This is very, does this look like a tome? It's a lot shorter than Exodus. Or the Gospel of Mark. I mean, this thing is very small. This, I had to read this about 12 times in my graduate school. Every single class, it's a read, it's read Dei Verbum at the beginning. It's read Dei Verbum. Dei Verbum is an incredible document. Incredible document. And basically, it talks about divine revelation. It talks about the way that God reveals himself, both through natural creation, as well as supernaturally, by giving us revelation apart from just what he has inscribed in nature. And when I just read from paragraphs 101 and 104 of the Catechism, those paragraphs are quoting from Dei Verbum.

34:26 They're quoting from Dei Verbum, paragraphs 13 and 21. And I want to read for you from paragraph 21 some more. This is what the bishops wrote in Dei Verbum. All the preaching of the church, this is paragraph 21, all the preaching of the church must be nourished and regulated by sacred scripture. For in the sacred books, the father who is in heaven meets his children with great love and speaks with them. And the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the church. The strength of faith for her sons, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life.

35:31 Is the Catholic view of scripture high? Do we have a high regard for scripture? You bet you we do. Because, and this is the way how we, I mean, if this is, if scripture is truly inspired, then this is the view that we have upon scripture. It's, it's huge. This is, I mean, this is beautiful. And have you guys ever heard this before? I mean, apart from me. And this should be read from the AMBO every Sunday. This should be in our, in our homilies. The documents of the second Vatican council are beautiful, beautiful. And they're very motivational too. I also want to point out that divine inspiration is not mere approval. It's not like God said, oh, you know what? I really like what you wrote, human author. You know, I'm going to approve that. I'm going to put my divine stamp of approval on it. And it's not like God just motivated the person to write.

36:21 Like the person's like, oh, I feel inspired to write. I'm going to write today. And it's not like God, like when we say scripture is inspired, it just, it just really, oh, it just really, you know, it's really motivational. Just, I mean, there's some really dry parts of scripture, right? So when we say inspired, we mean that God is the author, not that, not that God just merely assisted the person, like from the side, or like he just approved what he wrote, or God just agreed with what he wrote, but God actually is the principal author. Yes, Don. Sure. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and ask. Sure.

37:07 And maybe you can help me out here. Sure. Mark 16 and John 8. Right. Where these were not in the older manuscripts. Right. So like John 8 and Mark 16 were not in the older manuscripts. Like the second ending of Mark, because Mark has two endings, a shorter ending and a longer ending. And then John chapter 8, there's a section that was removed from one of the gospels for a while, and then later on it got inserted at John 7, 53 through 8, 11. And the story of the woman caught in adultery, right? So if these were added later, and were not part of the early manuscripts, then John didn't necessarily write about the woman taking adultery. Right.

37:55 So if John didn't write about the woman caught in adultery, because we know that that wasn't a part of the original gospel of John, because it seems kind of artificially inserted between John 7, 53 and 8, 11, then what about that? That's a great question. The biblical scholars, when we're analyzing the text, we see that the woman caught in adultery was probably written by one of the other gospel authors, was probably originally a part of Mark or Luke, and it may not have been. It may have been written by somebody else, and later on artificially inserted inside John. That person who wrote it, whoever it was, let's say it's not one of the original gospel authors who wrote the woman caught in adultery, John 7, 53 through 8, 11. That person who wrote that was inspired by God. And then even though it was kind of artificially inserted within the middle of the gospel of John, it still inspired.

38:46 And it's the same with the longer ending of Mark. Even though that it wasn't written all at the same time, it was probably added on later to Mark, maybe, we don't know exactly, but let's say that Mark finished his gospel with a shorter ending, and later on someone came and wrote a longer ending, that person who wrote that longer ending was inspired to do that, and that was God adding on. And again, this is where we see the liberal freedom of people. People can take and move things in Scripture and artificially insert them, and God will let them do that. And this is part of God's providence. But at the same time, God is still the author. He's still inspiring it. And this also takes us back to the question of textual variance. You know, we have a lot of different manuscripts of the gospels.

39:36 And we don't have the original autographs, the original, what we call the signatures, that the person had written on, on papyrus. We have copies of copies of copies. Now, the copies are very reliable, we know, through biblical science. They're about 98% to 99% reliable. I mean, they're incredibly reliable. A lot of people hear that we have manuscripts and manuscripts and manuscripts, so that's not reliable at all, and people will jump on that. But no, that's not the case. Well, when we say without error, we mean that the original autographs, the original manuscripts, are inspired. Not, you know, what order they were put in together. You know, if I took out part of one and inserted it inside of another, that's not necessarily inspired.

40:23 The original manuscripts are what are inspired, the original autographs. And sometimes, we might have a scribal copyist error. A scribe might have made one little itsy-bitsy error. And then later on, you know, it just continues in the manuscripts, and it shows up as an error today. And it really is an error. But it's not an error on the part of the original author. It's an error on the part of the scribe. Therefore, the original scripture is without error, but not the final product, what we have today, because of that one little scribal error. Does that make sense? Did I answer your question? Okay. Okay, good. So, you're saying about the provenance of John, as the theology was developed, and some scholars would say that John put a later development of the theology of Christ being incarnated, that the provenance of God is behind this.

41:16 Yes. I think the other demonic doctrines also show that God was incarnated. Yes. I mean, it depends on what scholar you read. Right. And this is why our faith ultimately does not rest in biblical scholarship and one scholar's opinion against another, but it's the constant faith of the church. It's always been the same. We've always, I mean, even if we didn't have all four gospels, if every single Bible in the world got burned, and we had no more gospels, and let's say everybody who had memorized Bible passages were shot in the head, the faith would still continue. We'd still be living it and believing it, even if we lost the gospels. This is because our faith, ultimately, the word of God continues to persist in the church. And this is where I want to look back at 2 Timothy chapter 3, which we were just at just a moment ago.

42:10 Let's turn back to 2 Timothy chapter 3. And notice that St. Paul says in verse 12, or in verse 14, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you have learned it. So he wants for Timothy to remain faithful to what he's learned from Paul. Things that the Old Testament doesn't speak of, such as, you know, everything Jesus Christ wanted to teach that he additionally revealed. And then when we look down at chapter 4, verse 2, Paul says, proclaim the word. Proclaim the word, the word of God.

43:04 And he doesn't mean just the Old Testament, just what he's calling scripture that's inspired, but also all those things that Timothy has learned from Paul, because he knows from whom he has learned it. Paul is reliable. Paul is an authority with a mandate, a personal mandate from Christ. And so we have this revelation that's not part of scripture, that we call apostolic tradition, that is the word of God. It's truly the word. It's truly revelation. And it persists. It continues in the church, even though it's not written down. And this is where we would see sacred tradition being with sacred scripture, here also in this passage. We have the two, they aren't at odds with each other, but they work with each other. And so this is where we get that from.

43:55 Paul in 1 Thessalonians. Okay, and that's 1 Thessalonians 1.13. And so Paul is telling the Thessalonians that they have received truly the word of God from Paul, not just the word of men. That when Paul taught them orally, that was the very word of God. And he wasn't necessarily writing it down. Some of it he wrote down, but he certainly spoke it. And that was the word of God. It was being continued. Because we have to remember that in the first century, the Jews had an oral way of life. They had oral traditions that were passed down and were not necessarily written down.

44:46 You know, we have people today who have memorized, committed to memory, entire books of scripture. And so in a certain sense, we have that type of oral tradition. If we were to get all the people in the world who had memorized scripture and got them all together and got them to recite together, we could probably reconstruct all of scripture faithfully. And this is kind of the cool thing about the human mind, the mystery of how the word of God persists in the church through apostolic tradition. Okay, now let's turn, let's kind of turn the coin from heads to tails. And let's look at the narrative of the Bible. Okay, so the Bible is God's love story. And basically, this is how it goes. Creation, fall, redemption, redemption.

45:43 That's basically what it is. It's one act of creation, the fall of mankind, and then one long history of redemption. Of salvation. And this is why we call the biblical narrative, and even going through today, right now we're still in the midst of it, salvation, history. God saving us from what? Well, from hell, hellfire. But from Satan, from sin, from selfishness, for eternal life with him in eternity. Which is what's going to be complete joy. And this is salvation history. And the key to the narrative, the meta-narrative, the huge narrative of the Bible, the key, the golden thread that ties the entire narrative together, is the covenant.

46:40 And this is where a lot of Paul's thought in Galatians and Romans comes from his knowledge of the covenant. He knows what's happened with Abraham, with Noah, with Adam. And because he knows about these covenants, he's able to argue and to reason with his Jewish contemporaries. Because the covenant is central to understanding the huge narrative of the Old Testament. And so God is making covenants with his people in salvation history. And he does this through covenant mediators. So God doesn't speak to each and every human individual person and make a covenant with them individually. He makes covenants with humanity as a whole.

47:31 And he does this through representatives. Who's the first representative that represents humankind that we can think of? Yeah. Adam. So Adam is the first. And we'll see this two weeks from now. In chapter 3, the creation of the world. We'll get more into this covenant that God makes with creation through Adam. But Adam is the first major covenant mediator. The second one is Noah. God makes a covenant with Noah. In a certain sense, he's renewing the covenant with Adam when he makes it with Noah. And then he makes several covenants with Abram. He makes one with Abram. And then he makes two covenants with Abram after he has his name changed to Abraham.

48:25 So Abraham or Abram, but we're going to say Abraham. We'll use his changed name. God makes a covenant with God makes a covenant with and he relates to the human race through Abraham. The next one is Moses, the Mosaic covenant. So we have Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. Then we have David, the Davidic covenant under David. And then finally, Jesus in the new covenant. So these are covenant mediators. And so the covenant is the golden thread that ties salvation history together. It's what ties Psalms with first Kings, with Deuteronomy, with Judges, Joshua, Ruth, Genesis, Exodus, Proverbs. The covenant ties everything together.

49:18 And throughout the rest of this study, we're going to see how that's so in the coming chapters. Now there's something, now when I say the covenant, or the covenant is the unifying factor of the Bible. When we're reading the Bible, we got to know what the covenant is. We got to know how, we need to know what is covenant. What are we, what is it and what is it not? Because today in our 21st century context, we can misuse the word covenant. And we mean something other than what the biblical authors meant. And what I mean by that is that we can mistake a covenant, or I'm sorry, we can mistake a contract for a covenant. But it's, and so, but we, we think it's a covenant.

50:13 Because we, we don't know the difference between a covenant and a contract. So we'll mistake a contract for a covenant. We'll, we'll think it's a covenant. So, let's look at the difference between a contract and a covenant. A contract, let me, let me make a, an example here. Let's say that in a contract, I decide that I want a pizza. And a, and I want a pizza from, from Harry. I say, Harry, I want a pizza. And Harry says, give me $10. And I go, oh, I promise to give you $10. I'm good. I have credit. Okay, let's make a contract. How about this? Um, he's going to give me credit. Maybe I might have to sign an invoice or something and you give me a pizza. So, we just entered into a contract.

51:05 I said, Harry, I'll give you $10 if you give me a pizza. And, and who's the guarantor that I'm going to give, whose, whose word are we relying upon when, when I'm entering into this contract with you? But who, whose, whose, whose word? Who gives you, huh? It's my word. Yeah. I don't say, you know, you know, the mayor can vouch for me. No, I'm saying I am. And I sign my name. This is why on all credit card receipts, you're signing your name, not someone else's name. Okay, so a contract is built upon a promise. A promise is saying, you know, I promise and it's, it's, the guarantor is, is you and it, and it's based upon your own name, your own authority. And in a contract, so you would be the guarantor.

52:01 So, so there's no one other than me. So, I have to have good credit before you'll accept, before you'll give me a pizza. Or let's, let's make it bigger. Let's say you're the bank and you're, you're giving me a loan for a house. First, I mean, there's no one else to vouch for me unless if there's a cosigner. But, you know, you have to rely upon me. I'm the guarantor. So, you are the guarantor. Maybe that's where Guarantee Bank got their name from. Okay, and you have an exchange of goods. I'm giving you $10. You can see them. They're green. Actually, now they're getting more and more colorful in the United States. And you give me a pizza. So, it's an exchange of goods. Exchange of goods. So, it's based upon my promise.

52:49 I'm the guarantor. And we're exchanging goods. And let's look at the difference between that and a covenant. A covenant is much more grand than a contract. A covenant is where you take a promise and you add to it God's holy name. Now, I'm going to say, Harry, not only do I promise to give you $10, but as God is my witness, I promise to give you $10. Ooh. Now, there's something totally new happening here. I'm invoking God's holy name. And this is so serious that Jesus says not to do this in the Sermon on the Mount. He's speaking in hyperbole, but this is the seriousness of invoking God's holy name. This is where we get that commandment.

53:37 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. So, a covenant is a promise, but has an added oath. You're invoking God's holy name, and we call this an oath. And we have people do this all the time. We have judges, police officers, military officers, firemen, witnesses on the witness stand, are swearing. Swearing, swearing, swearing. Invoking God's holy name. Because we can't trust them. We need to trust them. We must trust them, but we can't. So, we put them under oath, because then who becomes the guarantor? God. So, if the witness gives false witness, if the judge doesn't judge fairly, if the police officer is not impartial, if the military soldier runs off in a time of battle, who's going to administer justice, who's going to administer justice when no human court can?

54:41 God. God is the guarantor. And, in the Bible, a covenant is not an exchange of goods, but it's an exchange of persons. So, when God is in the covenant with us, he doesn't say, you know, I'll trade this with that of yours. But he says, you will be my people, and I will be your God. In marriage, do I say, you know, I'll exchange Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night for some good loving? You know, I'll kind of give you, you know, I'll give you the house, honey, if I get to keep the car, and maybe you can give me a couple of good meals? Is that marriage?

55:29 No. Marriage is an exchange of persons. I am yours, and you are mine. So, instead of having an exchange of goods, you have an exchange of persons. And this is a great metaphor, a great example to show the difference between a contract and a covenant. It's the difference between prostitution and marriage. Prostitution is, I'll sell you my body for some money. Marriage is, I give you all of me. I give you my sexuality, my finances, my home, my family, my past, my future, all of my fidelity, till death do us part. And nothing is excluded. I don't say, well, you know, what I do on Friday nights, now that's none of your concern. That's none of your business.

56:19 I can go do whatever I want on Friday nights. No. Everything is included in the covenant. The covenant is all-reaching. It's far-reaching. And so, this is the difference between a covenant and a contract. And this is very important to know, because in the Bible, we have God's name being invoked. Here, there, and everywhere. And this means that covenants are being formed. Covenants are being renewed. Covenants are being kept. And covenants are being broken. Here's another major thing to know. In order to understand the Bible, and it's the narratives of salvation history. This is especially in order to understand what happens in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, and how that affects the rest of the Old Testament, and it leads to the New Testament.

57:09 I mean, this is so central. In order to understand what's going on in the biblical narrative, we have to understand this one principle. You know how I said that God is the guarantor? This is how he is guarantor. If you keep the terms of the covenant, you get divine blessing. God pours down his blessings. In the Old Covenant, the blessings are material. They're temporal. Long life. Health. Lots of children. You'll be very fruitful. Your quiver will be full. You'll have lots of livestock. You'll be rich. In the New Covenant, God moves from the temporal goods to the eternal goods.

58:01 He promises not the creation, but the creator himself. God doesn't give us the lollipop. He gives us the lollipop giver. He gives us himself, divine life. Something that we can't sense. That we can't sense God. God can't be smelled, touched, heard, smelled, in his divinity, because he's uncreated spirit. That's if you keep the covenant. Now, God is guarantor also if you don't keep the covenant. If you don't keep the covenant, you get divine curses. And this is major. You really have to understand this to understand what's happening. Because why is Babylon conquering Jerusalem? God's holy city that God loves and respects as his bride, as he says in the Old Testament. Why is God allowing Babylon to destroy the southern kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem and the walls?

59:00 Why is this happening? Because Israel transgressed the covenant. And so this is the covenant curses befalling Israel. You see, and this is going to be part of salvation history that we're going to see. So we have to know if you keep the covenant, you get blessing. If you don't keep the covenant, you get cursed. And the curses are always redemptive. God curses in order to bring you to repentance. So the curses are redemptive. I also want to point out some other details about covenants that will help you understand the narrative. Okay. The point of determination. Determining the terms of the covenant. You know, determine, term, you know, the terms of the covenant.

59:51 You know, so what do I have to keep? And what do I have to do and not do those terms? Well, that's called determination. Coming up with those. Now, in a contract, the terms are mutually negotiable. I want a pizza for $8, Harry. No way. How much? $10. $9. Nope. Now you're acting like a covenant. You're supposed to say $12. I'm supposed to say $9. You're supposed to say $11. And then I go, no, $10. And you go, okay, $10. $10. We've mutually negotiated the terms. I mean, you don't ask for enough. $10. That's not high enough. We're going to end up at $10, but that's not. No. In a covenant, the terms are divinely predetermined and imposed. So, for instance, marriage.

1:00:44 Is marriage a human creation, a human invention? No, it's a divine invention. So can I recreate the terms of marriage? You know, we're going to get married on my terms. We're going to have a prenuptial agreement. You know, we're going to rearrange marriage. We're going to redo the terms. No, the terms are divinely imposed. In the same way, God says it's a take it or leave it scenario. God doesn't negotiate with humanity. He, the terms are divinely predetermined and imposed. There's no bargaining or coming to a mutual agreement. It's God, for goodness sakes, that you're dealing with here. Okay. Obligation is the second point I want to look at. So now that the terms have been determined, are we obligated to fulfill those terms? Well, if I, let's say we have a contract.

1:01:37 You give me the pizza. I give you, I give you $10. And I, I'm about to take a bite of the pizza. And I go, oh, it's reeks. What type of cheese did you use on this, Harry? And you go, you go, oh, well, you know, it's, uh, it's, uh, my cheese. I don't know. It's, uh, I make better profit, you know, use old moldy cheese. And I go, no, I'm out of this. No, I'm, here's your, here's my 10, give me my $10 back. Here's your pizza. And that's okay. We can break the contract. It can be broken. Or if it can be, you know, the contracts can be broken. Now, I'm not obligated to pay you that $10. I mean, or else, you know, divine curses are going to come down from heaven. No, nothing like that. The obligations are conditional. If I give you $10, you give me the pizza.

1:02:24 If I don't, then I don't get the good. If you give me a bad pizza, I can reject it. With a covenant, not only are the terms predetermined, but they're unconditional. You have to do the obligations. And if you don't do the obligations, you can't go, okay, let's reerase, you know, the covenant that we entered into. You know, I, I, no, I, I changed my mind. No, you're obligated. If you don't do it, cursed. If you do it, you're blessed. You're obligated. There's an, there, you can violate the conditions of the covenant, but you're not out of the covenant. The covenant remains. So when you break the covenant, you get broken, not the covenant. Now, you'll say, you know, that you broke the covenant. But what, what, what really happened is you're going to get the, you're going to get the covenant curses.

1:03:16 So we'll see that Israel will play the harlot. This is the imagery that the prophets use of Israel. Israel will commit idolatry. And so God will say, you've played the harlot. You know, you've gone after other husbands other than your maker. And so I'm going to punish you. But then after Israel is punished, Israel is still in covenant with God. You can't. And so God says, come back to me. Israel sends more, has more idolatry. God punishes them even more. They send more, God punishes. They do well, they get blessed. They send again, he get punished. You know, it just keeps going on and on and on. It's like never ending. Because the covenant is not done away with. And so this leads us to the next detail, which is duration.

1:04:08 Duration. Contracts are temporary. Once I've paid you my $10 and you give me my pizza and we're satisfied, that's it. We have, I can go my own way. I can never speak to you again. And that's fine. But once you enter into a covenant, covenants are permanent. Covenants are permanent. The only way you can get out of marriage is the death of one of the spouses. And so guess how Israel is able to get out of a broken covenant? The death of Jesus. The death of the covenant representative who takes upon himself the curses of the covenant and is able to deliver. Paul uses this argumentation in Romans. He talks about how, you know, the terms of the will, you know, someone's will cannot be carried out until the person dies. He says, so this has happened with Jesus.

1:05:03 Because Jesus, our covenant mediator, has died, now we're released from the Mosaic covenant. And we can enter into the renewed Davidic covenant. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay. Application. Oh, I like this. I like this metaphor, this symbol. The law of the covenant can be compared to the law of gravity. You can defy it. You can try and break it. But when you jump off of that skyscraper, do you break the law of gravity or does the law of gravity break you? Law of gravity breaks you. That's what the covenant is like. It can be compared to gravity. Application is the next one. So in order to enter into a covenant, you have to go get an application and fill it out. You have to get three references.

1:05:50 No, I'm just kidding. The application is that contracts are limited in application. I mean, who cares about, you know, let's say, who cares about, you know, what side of the bed I sleep on? You're my pizza man. You, any other part of my life is of no concern to you. Just that $10 that I'm going to give you, whether it's credit, check, debit, cash. But in a covenant, application is unlimited. Okay, it's unlimited. And so, again, we can look at marriage. Everything within my marriage is applied to. You know, when you enter into marriage, everything is the marriage applies to. Marriage applies to my free time.

1:06:44 Marriage applies to my work. Marriage applies to my finances. I mean, you know, there's a complete mutual relationship that's going on here. In the same way, when you're in your covenant with God, everything is God's. And everything that's God is, is yours. And so, it's not like you, well, you know, God, I'm going to be faithful to you. I'm going to pay my tithe. This is the Old Testament, of course. I'm going to pay my tithe to you. I'm going to go sacrifice my yearlings, the firstborn that are unblemished, just like you ask for. But I'm going to have 10 concubines. And my sexual life, you know, that I'm going to take care of on my own. No, you can transgress the law in any aspect of your life.

1:07:33 The law is all-encompassing of your life in the Mosaic Law under the Mosaic Covenant. The same thing under the Davidic Covenant that we'll see later on. And so, the covenant is huge. It's very major. If we want to understand what's going on in the biblical narrative, we have to know how major the covenant is. It's not just a little contract, or else things just don't make sense. It doesn't make sense why Israel is undergoing such huge curses, what the big deal is. Okay, I'd like to finish tonight, I'd like to finish this lesson by concluding with an examination of each of the covenant mediators of the Old Testament. Adam transgressed the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Noah got drunk from the fruit of the vine in his own vineyard.

1:08:32 Abraham had relations with Hagar and tried to conceive an heir, even when God had promised him a son through his wife, Sarah, in her old age. And so, who did Abraham conceive through Hagar? Ishmael. Not the son of promise. The son of promise was Isaac. Moses, after this long life of obeying God, ended up disobeying God and struck a rock out of anger in order to have water pour forth from it. God said, speak to the rock. Moses strikes the rock. And this was such a transgression of God's command that God did not allow Moses to enter the promised land. He wandered 40 years in the desert and dies, sees the promised land from Mount Nebo on the eastern side of the Jordan River and is not able to cross over because he transgressed his command. King David, a man after God's own heart, wonderful guy, so much is said that's great of him.

1:09:32 Psalm 51, one of the most famous penitential psalms of all the Psalter. Is David lamenting after committing adultery with Bathsheba and then murdering her husband, Uriah? Each covenant mediator fails in his task as mediator. Jesus, as we've already seen in Hebrews 4, verse 15, was like us in all things but sin. Jesus is the perfect covenant mediator. There is no sin in him. And therefore, he can bring us back into relationship with God. And while all of the covenant mediators in the Old Testament point forward to and help prepare for the person of Jesus, none of them can even match up to Jesus. And Jesus is not only perfect man, but he's also the God man.

1:10:25 He's 100% divine and 100% human. So, what I'd like for you guys to do is I'd like for you to get a copy of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. You can get it on the internet. It's free. You can go download it and print it off. It's very, it's not long at all. And if you'd like a copy from me, I could sell you this one for about $20. I'm just kidding. Just 10. 10, right. Right. A dollar. Okay. I'm just kidding. And to read this. And to read this. This is beautiful stuff. This is just, this is great stuff. It's also great to share with your Mormon friends who think that Revelation continues today through the prophet. It really, and it quotes scripture. It quotes earlier documents of the church. It quotes the early church fathers.

1:11:13 It quotes St. Jerome. Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ. That's in, I, no, actually I don't think that's in Dave Erum. I think that made it in the catechism, but it's not in Dave Erum. But Dave Erum, this is a beautiful document. Please read it. Please get a hold of it. And, and, and read the documents of the Second Vatican Council. This stuff is written for you guys. It wasn't written primarily for bishops or scholars or priests. This was written for you and I, for you and me. To get this, you can just go to google.com and search Dave Erum, D-E-I, space, V-E-R, B-U-M. Dave Erum, like a verb, U-M. And if you Google it, you'll be able to find it really easily. Okay, let's go ahead and close in prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

1:12:04 Father, thank you tremendously for the gift of your words in human words. We thank you for the gift of sacred scripture. We ask for the motivation and the energy and the time and the peace to be able to sit down and to persevere in reading all that you have for us who are able to pick up the page and read. And for those of us who are not, thank you for blessing us with the Liturgy of the Word at Mass. Clear our hearts of any hindrance to receiving your word with hearts of faith. And give us the gifts of faith, hope, and love as we read.

1:12:54 Help us to discern the mystery of your plan, hidden for all ages, but revealed in Jesus Christ. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.