How the Bible was Formed - Addressing Internet Myths w/ Lex Meyer (Unlearn the Lies)

Where does the Bible come from and is it accurate? Did it get translated over and over again leaving us with an untrustworthy version? And is the Bible simply man's perspective on how they saw God back then and not an accurate portrayal of his true character? Are some of these supernatural sounding stories like Yeshua walking on water or the Ark of Noah merely symbolic? Or did they really happen? And what does biblical prophecy show us regarding the miraculous composition of the Scriptures? Brothers and sisters, the accuracy of the Bible as we know it is, is being challenged today. People are wondering, should we take out this book, should we reinsert this other book? What do we do with the biblical canon? For if we aren't sure, it can surely shake our foundations. And some have even walked away from the faith completely because they have not been learned in this manner and have been taken away by lies. I want to submit to you that the Bible is not just accurate, but miraculously accurate. And today we're going to be going as an introduction to this topic to look at the accuracy of the Bible. And then next week we plan to also look at has the Bible been corrupted, looking at the apocrypha, different canons and so on. So welcome to the live stream. Please engage in the live chat with us. Tell us some of your thoughts and we're gonna take a look there as well. I want to introduce all of you. My guest to you. My guest today, Lex Meyer from Unlearn the Lies. Lex, thank you so much for joining me, brother.

Hey pd, thanks for having me on.

Awesome guys. You may know Lex from Unlearn the Lies, the YouTube channel where he releases Bible teachings. He's also the pastor of the Graft Church in Central Oklahoma. He's the author of the book Immortal, which focuses on the importance of the resurrection. And he's also writing another book right now on the deity of Yeshua. Recently, Laxhu also put out some videos regarding this very topic on the accuracy of the Bible, the biblical canon and so on. So I really, I'm really honored that you could join us here to share some of your thoughts on that. Could you start off by sharing with us just some of your introductory thoughts on why this is important to you?

Well, I think this is a very foundational topic because if we can't trust the scriptures, then how do we know with what the scriptures say are true? And so how do we know if what the Bible tells us about Yeshua is true? How do we know if what the Bible tells us about the Torah is true? You know, and the prophets and all the different things, how do we know they're true? If we don't know that we can trust the Scriptures and if we think we are missing anything or if things have been added in that weren't supposed to be there, then that causes questions and doubts and it really affects our faith. And so having a firm foundation in the Scriptures helps us to have a firm faith.

That's good, brother. And you know, you mentioning faith, I think that's so integral to this whole conversation because if you think about it, whether we trust and have faith that the Scriptures have been preserved as it was written, in a way that's faithful, right, to the author's intent and to the character of God and so on, man, if we don't trust that, then how can we trust anything about who God is himself and anything that he's ever done? So, yeah, so let's. Can we start off with talking? You know, when we talk about the Bible, you know, I believe most people watching this, they have one of these somewhere in their home. And if you don't, if you go to stay over at a hotel, you'll probably find one in the drawer there. Like, this book has changed the world. It's everywhere and for good reason. But where does it come from? Can you share a little bit about that for us?

Yeah. So really there are two pieces to this to understand. There's the Old Testament and how it was formed, and then there's the New Testament and how it was formed. With the Old Testament canon, it began with Moses. And so Moses, God gave Moses instructions on what to write down. And so Moses started writing hero, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And then towards the end of Moses life, right before he died, most likely it was Joshua who kind of picked up the pen and finished up the book of Deuteronomy and kind of what happened to Moses before they, before going into Joshua. And so Joshua finished off Deuteronomy and then Joshua wrote Joshua. Then you have the prophets come in. And so Samuel writes, and Elijah and Elisha write. And you get the different prophets writing throughout history. And all of the Old Testament canon was written by some sort of a prophet or a priest. And they were all kept very. They were considered sacred scriptures and they were kept under guard. They were preserved. And like Moses, writings were kept. There was a copy kept in, in the Ark of the Covenant. And, you know, they also kept other copies other places, you know, in the temple and various places like that. But as, as the Old Testament canon drew to an end, we see after, after you know, around the time of Daniel and Micah or Malachi. No, Micah. Is it Micah? There's Micah. Anyway, those kind of, those prophets kind of round off the end of the Old Testament. So you kind of have, you know, a handful of prophets that towards the end of Israel's history that kind of round off the Old Testament. And then you have the silent period and it's the 400 years between Malachi, Matthew and during that 400 time, 400 year time period, there are other writings that took place. And we consider those Apocrypha stuff like the Maccabees and wisdom of Solomon and Tobit and things like that. But those were written between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And the interesting thing about it is the book of Maccabees testifies that there were no prophets during that time. No one hearing from the Lord. And so its own self witness is that it cannot be inspired scripture because no one was hearing from the Lord. And to call something inspired scripture means that it was inspired by God. God gave the words. God gave the inspiration to write those words. And so that intertestamental period, we can't consider those books scripture because they're not inspired by the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit was not inspiring anybody during that time. It was considered the silent years. And God was not speaking through a prophet or priest or anyone like that. Then we get to Matthew and we start the New Testament canon and we have the, the Gospels and then the epistles. Nearly all of them were authored by an apostle or a close associate of apostle. So they're either written by an apostle or written by a disciple of an apostle. And they're written, written by people who were witnesses to the events. It wasn't written hundreds of years later by people who didn't know. It wasn't hearsay. It was people who saw, saw Yeshua, walked with Yeshua, talked with Yeshua, knew the disciples, walked with them, talked with them, saw the events taking place. It was all written by eyewitness accounts. And the New Testament wraps up towards the end of the first century around, you know, Hebrews was written around 70 and I think Revelation was written around that time as well. And that kind of towards the end of the first century we have kind of the, the finishing of the New Testament. Then we have, after that we have post apostolic writings that were not authored by the apostles themselves. So you have guys like Polycarp and you know who's another famous one? Arrhenius. Yep. And then you know, later Eusebius and you know, various other early Christian writers in the 2nd 3rd century that they are, who very important historically. But we don't consider them scripture because they were not directly connected to Yeshua. They, they did not walk with Yeshua. They did not know him. And so they're not firsthand accounts. They're. They're considered secondhand accounts and thirdhand accounts. And so we don't consider their writings to be scripture. And in many cases, like for example, Polycarp, he quoted directly from the New Testament. The majority of the time. Most of his writing was just he took New Testament writings and used them in what he said and just kind of give commentary on it. And so there's, I think it's like, you know, upward of 60 or 70% of what he wrote was quote directly from the New Testament. And so we have a lot of external witnesses to the New Testament, you know, because guys like Polycarp and Eusebius and, and those kind of guys, they quoted the New Testament and referenced it. So we know that it has early attestation. Attestation, right. Meaning it was an early writing.

That's cool.

Yeah, because they're quoting from. We know it was written before their writings.

Right.

So even though we don't have a first century copy of the New Testament, because we have second century writers quoting the New Testament, we know that it was written before them. So it was written in the first century. What we do have is early copies that were dated to around the second century. And so we do have second century copies of the New Testament. We don't have the original manuscripts, but we have early copies. And what we have today, when you're looking at your scriptures today, they line up like 99.9% accurately with all the manuscripts we have. We have thousands of manuscripts. I think if you count all the minuscules and fragments, there's around 20,000 different manuscripts that are represented in various languages and Greek and Latin and Coptic and Ethiopic and Aramaic and all these different languages. And they all say basically the same thing. And so we know that it hasn't been altered or changed.

So a lot of people, they have this idea that the books of the Bible were chosen, right? That there was this council or there was some church leader, some pope, someone behind closed doors, who decided what's going to be making up what we call the Bible? And you know, to that point, I think what we have to remember is that when we look at like you just mentioned these disciples of the original apostles and these early church fathers, right, they are writing as witnesses of the New Testament author's writings. And they're saying we see these, we, we were living in close proximity to these events. And of course they are confirming it occurred. I also want to read regarding how these came about into what we call the Bible. Just a quote from a New Testament scholar, F.F. bruce. In his writing the New Testament documents on page 22, he says one thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the church because they were formally included in a canonical list. On the contrary, the church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as inspired Scripture, divinely recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. And so basically. Right, he's just saying that the people, if you were to go to a person in the first century, in the second century and beyond, and you ask them, so why were these books chosen to be considered scripture? Right. When it's. They would say at that point, look, we're not choosing this. We're recognizing that these are the writings of the apostles and because they are, they have authority. And later that would be canonized later that would be formally, you know, put into what we see in the form of today called the Bible, but made its way there by being recognized in that authority. Anything you want to add to that?

So I was actually looking for a verse, but there's actually a couple verses and I wish I could remember them right off the top of my head so I could tell them to you I was going to see if I could search for them real quick. And so I know. So Peter calls Paul's writing scripture and he says, Paul, you know, in, in his epistles is written about things that are difficult to understand and untaught and unspiritual people twist them to their own destruction as they do the rest of scripture. And so he's including Paul's writings as part of the rest of scripture. And so Peter's recognizing Paul's writing as scripture. And then Paul actually in one of his epistles talks about how they have been entrusted with the very words of God. And the way it's is written is it sounds like he understands that he's writing scripture. And so I've heard people say, well, Paul didn't know he was writing scripture when he wrote these letters. He just, he was just writing letters to the churches. And later they just decided to make him scripture. And there's, there's actually some things in Paul's writings that make it it clear that Paul understood that he was writing scripture and Peter understood that he was writing scripture and they were testifying of each other. Peter was recognizing Paul's writings of Scripture and Paul was recognizing Peter and also the Gospels, that they were affirming the Gospels as scripture as well. And so there, there is, within the Scriptures themselves there is self attestation that they were affirming themselves to be writing Scripture, recognizing each other as writing scripture. And I think that's very significant. And so when people come along and say, well, Paul didn't know he was writing Scripture, I would say, I very much disagree. I think Paul was, I think he did understand that he was writing scripture. And even within his letters he would say things like this is from the Lord and this right here, what I'm about to say, this is my opinion. And he made sure to distinguish the two. And you see all throughout the Gospels and the Epistles and Acts and all kinds of places that it says this is the word of the Lord. And so they were speaking the word of the Lord. And even in Acts where it says that the early church devoted themselves to prayer and to, excuse me, to fellowship, to breaking of bread and to the apostles teachings, recognizing that they were seeing the apostles teaching as scripture and they were following it and they were walking according to it. I think that's very significant.

That is, thank you for adding that. That's really cool. So moving on to the accuracy now of. Because I think, okay, we're seeing the authority of the Scriptures written by the apostles now. Let's talk about that preservation of that. Okay, that's a long time ago. It's 2000ish years ago now. How was that preserved and how do we know that the copies made thereafter? Because of course, as you mentioned, we don't have the originals. How do we know that that which we do have is similar to what they had originally written?

So we have two different.

The same.

Yeah, we have two different ways, two different topics to talk about. One is the Old Testament preservation of Scripture and one is the New Testament. The Old Testament was written by scribes. And the Jewish scribes were, they were trained professionals. They were very meticulous. And so when they would copy a line of Scripture, they would copy word for word, every single line, every single dot, every single mark. If, if a letter was larger, they would make sure they made it larger. If a letter was smaller, they made sure they made it smaller. And so they were very particular on how they copied it with extreme accuracy. There was also a, what they call, a, what do they call it? It's, it's oral, Oral tradition. And so within the oral tradition, they would memorize large portions of Scripture and so they could recite them accurately. Large, large volumes of Scripture. And so like, to become a rabbi, they were, they were required to have the Torah memorized by a certain age. I think it was like 12 or 13. They had to have the entire Torah memorized. And, and some of them would even have the entire Old Testament memorized by that age. And so someone like Paul who studied under Gamaliel, Gamaliel was considered one of the more strict in that regard. And he would have required his students to have memorized the entire Old Testament by the time they were about 12 or 13. And so Paul being trained under Gamaliel, he would have had the entire Old Testament memorized by the time he was 13. And so when Paul is quoting the Old Testament, Paul is well versed in the Old Testament. So he, you know, he is able to verify that what is written is accurate. The interesting thing about the Old Testament is that we don't have ancient Hebrew copies of it. The oldest copy of the Old Testament we have is actually in Greek and it's called the Septuagint. And it was, the story behind it is that they had 70 scribes, Jewish scribes, who copied the Old Testament into Greek and they copied them independently of each other. And then when they got together to compare notes, they basically, they all had the exact same Old Testament in Greek. And So they had 70 copies that matched word for word. That's the story. I don't know if how true it is, but that's the story of how the Septuagint came about. And but what we do have of the Old Testament, Hebrew comes from much later. I think it's like 4th or 5th century after Yeshua's death. And there are differences between the Hebrew and the Greek. The, the Masoretic text is what we consider the Hebrew Old Testament. Now, it's different from the Septuagint in certain places. And those certain differences are specifically connected to prophecies about the Messiah. Septuagint, written several hundred years before Yeshua accurately predicts many of the things that Yeshua said and did. And the New Testament authors quote from the Septuagint. When they're quoting, it looks, is very similar. You know, it looks like they're quoting directly from the Septuagint. And then the version that we have in the Hebrew, the Masoretic, may be different in certain places. And it's things that hide Yeshua. And I actually think that's what, when, when I think it was Jeremiah that talked about the lying pen of the Scribes. I think that's what he's talking about is the Masoretic text and how they tried to hide Yeshua. And so they went through the, the Old Testament text and they changed a few things to try to make it not so obvious that Yeshua is the Messiah. And I, I think that was intentional. I think they did it to try to keep people from believing in Yeshua because the Septuagint, which was several hundred years before Yeshua, accurately predicted all of those things. The Masoretic text is much more or much less obvious. It's, it's more hidden in, in the way it prophesies about Yeshua. It still could be used to point to Yeshua, but it's not as, as obvious as the Septuagint is. And so I think that's the. I think that's what the lying pain of the scribe is, is the Masoretic text and how it was altered to change, to skew the text so that it didn't point directly to Yeshua. But anyway, so the Old Testament, I think, was very well preserved by the scribes. And then we get to the New Testament. The New Testament was not written by scribes. The New Testament was written by average everyday people. And so we have fishermen and we have tax collectors, and we have, you know, all the different careers that these disciples had before they started following Yeshua, before they became his disciples and later became his apostles. And so they weren't trained scribes. And so we have more copying issues. And then the way that the New Testament was passed down is like, for example, if we had a copy of the Book of Romans, we would make a copy of it and give it to you. And then you would have a copy of the Book of Romans, and then you would make a copy of it and give it to your friend. And so it was handwritten by people. And so there's more room for error. But when we compare the vast number of manuscripts we have from the New Testament, which I said earlier was around, I think around 2,000 manuscripts. When you, when you count the minuscules and various languages, I think there's 5,000 in Greek, entire manuscripts. But then you have pieces, fragments, and minuscules and then also copies in other languages. And I think the total is around 2,000 manuscripts. And you can compare all those different languages and all those different Greek manuscripts. And the differences are they're not really. They don't matter. And so it's things like word order, punctuation, spelling, if they use a pronoun versus a personal name. So like they say he instead of Jesus, you know, things like that. And so you have very insignificant differences between them. The content of its. Of the text is not changed, so that what. What the text is saying, it doesn't change in all of them. There's no major differences. The, the only differences really are the spelling and the grammar and punctuation and whether they use a pronoun or a personal name, things like that. Those are the majority of differences you find among 20, 000 manuscripts, which is phenomenal.

Yeah. I'll also quote Greek scholar D.A. carson, which he sums it up in his writing the King James Version debate, and he says the purity of text is of such substantial nature that nothing we believe to be true and nothing we are commanded to do is in any way jeopardized by the variants. It's like you said, these are inconsequential variants. And by the way, anyone who wants to actually look at the decisions that had to be made in evaluating these different texts, you can get something called the Biblical Apparatus, which is a book that basically looks at how these decisions are made yourself. There's nothing hidden here. Like, these things are very readily available for anyone to look into if you're really desiring to do that.

So, you know, if you have a good study Bible, they'll give you footnotes, and in the footnotes it'll say, you know, some manuscripts don't include this verse, or some manuscripts say this instead of that, and things like that. So a lot of times a good study Bible will give you footnotes about those kind of things. So you can see for yourself. Another variant that I forgot to mention is sometimes they would accidentally skip a line. So, you know, you're copying, you've copied 100 lines of text, and your eyes get a little crossed, and maybe you accidentally skip a line. And so sometimes there's an accidental omission, or maybe you just skip a word you're copying and you just accidentally forget to. You leave out a word or something. That happens sometimes. And then sometimes they have duplicate lines where they copy the same line twice. And so they're just on autopilot and they're just copying, and they didn't realize they just copied the same line twice. And so you have variants like that as well.

Yeah. And for anyone who's wondering how these are sorted out. Right. There's a method, a whole study, called textual criticism in the academic world. And this is not just applied to the Bible. This is applied to historical documents, secular documents of history as well. And so for example, if to just make it simple, you know, if your mom had a recipe and she is getting old and she writes it down and you guys decide, okay, you know, before the time of the Internet and phones, we're all going to write down this recipe. And you've got 20 people that at the end of the day got copies. You've got the children, the grandchildren, and one day, you know, grandma passes away. Now, and this recipe, how do we know we have the original? Well, everyone comes together with their copies and we see that Sally, she forgot to mention that tomatoes are part of the ingredients. And we have this other person who, you know, we included something that shouldn't have been there, perhaps carrots or whatever. But at the end of the day, not everyone is making the same mistake in the same place. And so it's pretty easy to just look at all of these copies to see, well, all of the others don't have carrots. So obviously it shouldn't be there. Very simple example. But that's basically how they went about this in the majority tax example. There's other ways that they also do the critical taxes and other text that was created using principles that were a little different as well. For those who are interested, you can look into these. But like what Lex said to just echo and to round this off, Wallace Daniel says in his writing the major the majority text and the original text are the identical. In Bibliotheca Sacra in 1991, he says again, side by side comparison between the two main text families, the majority text and the modern critical text, shows agreement in a full 98% of the time. And of the remaining differences, virtually all yield to vigorous textual criticism. This means that our New Testament is 99.5% textually pure.

And even, even guys like Bert Ehrman, who is a critic of the Bible, right, he is a new. He is a Greek scholar and you know, he studied and trained to translate in Greek. And so he is well versed in, in Bible translations. He could, he could write his own translation of the Bible if he wanted to. But he's not a man of faith. And so he's, he's a non believer who is trained as a scribe and a textual critic. And even he admits that the Bible we have is virtually identical to the Bible that was written in the first century. He said that there's, you know, there's no, he has no argument against that. He has no argument to say, well, it's been Altered and changed is not the original. He would come along and say, yeah, the Bible we have today is basically the original text that was originally written 2000 years ago. Right. And I think that says a lot too. Just to have such a well known critic of the New Testament to come along and say yeah, this, the Bible you hold today is basically the Bible that was written in the, in when it was originally written. And so I think that says a lot.

Yeah, the critics can well disagree with what's written in the Bible, but they can't disagree with whether it's been preserved accurately throughout time as you say.

Right. Yeah, they may not believe it, but they can't argue that it is accurate. Right.

And you know, I think it's really cool to also compare the biblical manuscript evidence towards the non biblical text evidences of history and past. So for example, you know, if you, I'll just read a few here for everyone to hear. The first century document the Jewish war by Jewish aristocrat and historian Josephus. It survived in only nine complete manuscripts dating from the fifth century, four centuries, that is after they were written.

Yeah.

We also have Tacitus Annals of Imperial Rome. It's one of the chief historical sources used for the Roman world in the New Testament times. But yet it survives in partial form in only two manuscripts from the Middle Ages. We also have only eight copies of Thucydides history, ten copies of Caesar's Gallic wars, eight copies of Herodotus history, seven copies of Plato also thousand years removed from the original Homer's Iliad. And this is probably the most impressive that we have from secular history. They have 647 copies. But then when you look at the New Testament, as Lex mentioned earlier, We've got over 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts that doesn't account for the other languages. So you know, that's not something to dispute now because of course if, if we are going to dispute the scriptures, we have to dispute all of these historical documents and there is really nothing of history that from that age that we can take seriously.

Yeah. And people, you know, they don't argue about Homer's Iliad, they don't argue about Plato or Socrates and how accurate their writings are, but they won't argue about the New Testament which is far more copies, far more accurate and far earlier dated than any of the others. And so it's pretty impressive the amount of copies and the close proximity we have to the original authors with the New Testament writings that no other book in history has, that no other ancient book in history has that.

And yeah, I mean, the numbers are just staggering.

Right.

What we just said, I mean, I just read 5366 versus like 650 ish for the best secular historical document of manuscripts. It's just out of this world. And I think it testifies of the involvement of the Holy Spirit in the things that actually happened in the first century in Yeshua's ministry and in the apostles ministry and the writing down of those things and of course the revelations and then also the Holy Spirit's involvement in the preservation of those writings. Because clearly there's something divine going on for us to have this amount of documentation. God wanted us to be sure because God knew that this is what he's leaving us and we need to be sure that what we have is what he wants us to know.

Absolutely.

So Laxa, what do you tell people who say, and this is something you hear often kind of on the street, The Bible is this document that just got translated over and over and over and over again. And what we have today, we don't really know if it's real anymore. What would you say to that argument?

So what I would say first off is that most modern translations we have are based on the oldest manuscripts we have access to. And so when they, when they translate the new King James or the NRSV or the NASB or the NIV or the ESV or whatever translation you're looking at, they go back to the original text that we have, the oldest manuscripts we have, and they copy from them, they translate from them. And so they don't. They're not copying. The new King James didn't take the King James and just say, hey, we're going to take this and just kind of modify it a little bit. They went back to the original Greek and Hebrew and they translated from that with, with the same style as the King James, you know, and the NIV did the same thing. They went back to the original Greek and Hebrew and translated from that. They didn't, they didn't just take another. They didn't take a Spanish Bible and translate it to English. They didn't take a German Bible and translated to English. They, they took the original text, the, the old, the oldest text we have, and copied from those and so. And translated from those. And so it's not a, it's not a perversion of Lost in translation. Now with the Spanish translation, I think there is a little bit of that. And so I've talked to some people who are Spanish speakers and they Say that there's really, they really struggle to find a good Spanish Bible because from what I understand the Spanish translations do come from English and so they take an English Bible and translate it to Spanish and there's a lot of, a lot of error in that. And so I will give you that the Spanish Bibles do have their, their problems in that. From what I understand, there is a good Spanish translation, but it's harder to find. The, the ones that are easier, cheaper and more available aren't as good. And so for Spanish speaking audience, that is a problem that you, you do have to struggle with. And, and I wish it was better for you. I don't know about other languages like French and German and whatever, but I do know English. They've, they've been very diligent with English translations.

Yeah, I was at the Babu Museum in Washington D.C. last year and there's a section in the museum. If you've never been there, you should go. It's amazing where they have this room full of Bibles and it's every translation of the Bible that they can find. Right. It's ever been found and done. It's there. And I mean there's languages that most of those languages I've never heard of. Right. Because you can't imagine how many languages are in the world. And yet there are people diligently trying to translate the Scriptures even today still. And there's still there's some labels that don't have a Bible on top of it yet because those languages haven't been there in the process or they haven't been done yet. Because if you can imagine, you need to find something in that little country with that little language who can not only speak the language well, but also speak Greek or read Greek. Right. If you want to do what we've done with the English language, for example. So the people are trying their best and of course as time goes along, things improve. But everyone who's listening to this, right, if you are wondering, the English, as Lex mentioned, the English language is so common. So just like the Greek was the language the disciples, the apostles chose back then because the world was speaking Greek. So in the same way today we can see our English languages had a lot of investment and to get a.

Trustworthy translation to us, yeah, Greek was considered the language of commerce. And so it's like English is today, you know, if you're doing global commerce, English is the language that's used. And so if you're dealing with Japan or China in some sort of a business deal, they speak English in that business deal. They don't speak Japanese or Chinese. And so other countries learn English just so they can do commerce with the United States and with England and Australia and South Africa and, you know, all the different countries that speak English because there's. English is so well spread across the world. English is a second language to almost everybody and a first language to a lot. So English is the language of commerce today, in the same way Greek was the language of commerce in the first century, of course.

So to my South African friends, Akan, Afrikaans brought. In other words, I could. I was raised in my own language of Afrikaans in South Africa, but we were still. We were still learning English because that's what the world speaks, right? So, yeah, like, to your point. All right, Lax. Another thing I wanted to bring up is the amazing role of prophecy in this whole thing. I want to just read a few verses from the book of Isaiah, which most famously, perhaps speaks of Yeshua. And I want us to just kind of count just in this chapter, how many prophetic hints there are of the Messiah. And it says this and Isaiah 53. Okay, yeah, verse five. I'm gonna start there. And it says, he was pierced for our transgressions. Okay. Then we have our first one, because we know that's what happened to his body. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

And.

And with his wounds, we are healed. You see there the role of his ministry, the healing in his ministry that was brought about because of the power of the crucifixion. We see in verse six here, all we, like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Right? That's what he has done. We know that that is what the New Testament also proclaims to us was the whole purpose of him going to the cross. We see in verse 7, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. We know that that also happened when he was being questioned. He was not defending himself. He basically said, it is, as you say, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that is before its shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth. Then it says in verse 8, by oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. So we know that his people rejected him that he was one that is to be cut off. And then we see in verse nine here ending off, and they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. And though he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. And so there we also see the New Testament examples of how he was on the cross with wicked men, a thief on the cross, and with a rich man, he was in his death. In other words, he was put in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Right. We also see in Isaiah 7:14 about how Isaiah talks about the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. God is with us. Right. Talking about the virgin birth, talking about God being with us. Okay, there's. These are. I think I've counted eight things here. But the crazy part to me is how These are about 700 years before Yeshua shows up. Isaiah is speaking about these events to miraculous detail. I mean, imagine someone today speaking of just who the president's going to be in 100 years. But here we have 700 years removed, and it's every detail of his life. And the odds of that actually occurring is just. It's impossible. And I'll just share this before I, Before I hand it back to you. I remember reading that the. If you took. The odds are for eight of these to come true is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. In other words, that's a 1 with 17 zeros behind it. That's like taking a coin among that number of 10 into the 17th power, writing an axe upon it and. And throwing all of these coins in the state of Texas, it will bury the state of Texas two feet deep. And if we sent a blind man in there to just pick up a random coin in the state of Texas being buried two feet deep. And that's the coin of X marked on it. That's the odds of what we just read in Isaiah coming to pass to the detail that it did. Now, there's over 300 prophecies of Yeshua in the Torah and prophets. This is not. There's not just eight. And so, you know, I just find it miraculous and amazing how this also shows us the sync that is there divinely between all of these writings that is found in what we call the Bible, so far removed hundreds and even thousands of years.

Yeah. So you quoting Isaiah 53 got me thinking about something else as well. And it's Psalm 22. And so Psalm 22 starts off with the words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me. And we know that's what Yeshua said on the cross, right within Jewish rabbinical teaching style, they would often quote one line from a section of Scripture. And we actually see this throughout the New Testament. Often this type of thing done is they'll reference one line from a passage in the Old Testament, and they're expecting you to either know that passage or go back and look at it and to see what that passage is about. And when you look at Psalm 22, which starts off with, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Which is the words of Yeshua on the cross, we see that it is also prophetic of his crucifixion. And so, you know, verse seven, all those who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, he trusts in the Lord, let him rescue him. You know, we know in the New Testament they say, well, you know, you know, you claim to be the Son of God, you know, let God pull you down off the cross. He trusts the Lord, let him rescue him, let him deliver him, since he delights in him. Verse 19, verse 12. Many bulls have surrounded me. Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. And so he was surrounded by these, these strong men. Verse 14. I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. And we know that, you know, he had, you know, he said that he was thirsty. And we know that, you know, they speared him aside, water came out, and it says, my heart is like wax, it has melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue clings to my jaws. You have brought me to the dust of the death. And we know that he, you know, he did die for dogs that surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. And so we know that Yeshua's piercing the hands and the feet. I can count on my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them. We know that they divided his garments when they were before. They hung him on the cross, my closing. And for my clothing they cast lots. We know they did that as well. And so, you know, it's really interesting as you look at this passage, that there's so many things in here that point to Yeshua's crucifixion. And so when he was on the cross and he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I don't think he was saying that he was truly forsaken. I think he was pointing us to this verse to say, see, this was prophesied, this was foretold in the Old Testament.

That's insane.

And there's, there's numerous things like that. Like for example, when John said, are you the Messiah, the one we're supposed to be waiting for? And John was in prison. John, John the Baptist, you know, he was in prison. And one of the prophecies about the Messiah was he was set the captives free. And so John sends word to Yeshua and says, are you the. Are you the Messiah? Are you the chosen one, the one we're supposed to be waiting for? And Yeshua sends word back and he quotes the Old Testament and he quotes, he says, you know, that the blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear the lame walk. You know, he quotes all these things, but he leaves out the part about those in prison are set free. And so it's like he's sending this coded message back to John the Baptist saying, yes, I'm the Messiah, but you're not getting out, you're going to stay in jail.

That's actually, I've never thought about that part that he left that out. That's interesting. Wow. Yeah. And John, you. That's the thing is, and that's why we today need to know the scriptures, because then we can also see what Yeshua's saying where other people might actually miss what's. What's happening. Yeah, beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. So lastly, I want us to sort of just conclude with this question here, some question whether some of the Torah is written merely from men's perspective on how they viewed God back then, not being a true representation of God's actual character. You know, what would you say to people like that? I think sometimes it comes in because I read something in the Bible, maybe especially in the writings of the Torah, and they see something that happened and God seems, you know, angry. God seems. There's this characteristic of God that I don't know what to do with. Perhaps, you know, why did God do this? Why did God do that? And then people start questioning the authenticity of the writing itself. Oh, that's probably just how Moses saw God. That's not actually how God was. You know, what would you say to someone wrestling with that?

So what I would say first off is that is the trap that Marcion fell into. Marcion was a second century heretic. And Marcion, he was considered. He was a gnostic, and he had a certain form of gnosticism. And what Marcion basically said was the God of The Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament. And so he wanted to separate the Old New Testament. And the problem with that is that he sees Yeshua as different from the God of the Old Testament. And so Yeshua is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yeshua is some new God. And the testimony of Yeshua himself is that Moses and the prophets all wrote about me. He said they wrote about him, that they testified about him, and that all that was written in Moses and prophets was about Yeshua. And so if Yeshua is not the God of the Old Testament, then we have an issue because Yeshua is claiming to be the God of the Old Testament. And so what we had to figure out is why does the Old Testament seem different in certain areas to the New Testament? And that's really the question. And I think a lot of that has to do with our own preconceived ideas as well. And so we see in the Old Testament, you know, God come in and he said, well, okay, so Pharaoh has. He has mistreated my people. And he has killed, you know, Pharaoh came in, he killed the firstborn sons of Israel. That's. Moses was spared, but his entire generation was annihilated. The firstborn sons of Moses generation were all killed. And so Moses was the only one who survived that great tragedy. When God comes along later and he says, I'm going to kill the firstborn of Egypt, it's that idea that vengeance is mine, says the Lord. And so God is taking vengeance on what Pharaoh started. You know, Pharaoh's the one that picked the fight. Pharaoh started it by attacking God's people. And God said, I'm going to take care of my people. And so he comes along later, and with the death of the firstborn of Egypt and the, the passover lamb and the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, he's taking vengeance against Pharaoh and what he did to the sons of Israel. And so, you know, and then you go on later and you see the Amalekites and God says, wipe out the Amalekites. Well, why? Because the Amalekites were evil people. And they were, they were coming to kill God's people. And so it's. It's always this idea that God doesn't want to destroy everybody but God. The people who are against God, God is against them. And when they make God his enemy, then they have to deal with his vengeance and his wrath. And so that's the picture we see in the Old Testament. Well, that's no different than the New Testament. You look in Revelation, and what does it say? He's a rider on the white horse with a sword in his hand. And there's blood on the necks of the horses up to their bridle because he's slain all of his enemies. And it's describing Yeshua. Yeshua is riding on the white horse with a sword and he's slaying his enemies and there's blood up to the bridles of the horses. That is the. That is what it's describing of Yeshua. Well, you know, and he says that I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. And, you know, so there's. There's numerous things in the New Testament people like to conveniently overlook. They say, well, Yeshua is just about peace and he's about love. And he's some hippie who's just telling everybody, everybody just love each other and get along. That's not exactly his message. You know, he called the Pharisees a brood of vipers. And, you know, he said that. That they are whitewashed tombs and hypocrites and things like that. And he said, if your righteousness doesn't exceed the righteousness of the scribes of Pharisees, that you're going to be cast in. Into the outer darkness where there's weeping and as of teeth and, you know, there's this separation of the sheep and the goats and, and the separation of the wheat and the tears and. And those who don't belong in his kingdom, they're going to be annihilated, they're going to be destroyed. And so it's not different, it's just delayed.

It also, it reminds me of an Isa, another example in the New Testament, they're lying to the Holy Spirit, and right there, right, one after the other, they just drop dead. That's the same kind of stuff we read that God does in the story of Moses and the Exodus. So it's. Yeah. Another thing is people, they come and they say things like, well, that story or this story is just symbolic. And, you know, we don't have much too much time further. But I want to just say on that as well. It's the same issue where there's something in the Bible that we read and because we can't believe it could be literal or we can't believe that's what God is really like. And then we try and say, well, that's just symbolic. That didn't really happen. That's just to teach us a deeper thing. Yeah, there are Deeper things to learn, but be careful of just because something doesn't make sense to you, symbolizing it away. When we are talking about things like the fact that Jonah, right, was this guy, it was in a fish. It's like it sounds like a children's story to some, but Yeshua uses examples like Jonah to even point to his own, the reality of his own death, burial and resurrection. Where he says in Matthew 12, where he talks about how Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days, so the Son of man will be in the heart of the earth for three days. He's basically saying, just as that was happening, my resurrection is going to happen. He's saying, as real as that was, is as real as I and what I'm about to do will be. Right? So that was the sign that he pointed the Pharisees and scribes to, that was the prophecy of his is coming. You know, so well.

And Paul, Paul talks about Adam and he says, you know, that, that the first man, Adam was a living being and that we all gain our flesh from him. We are made in the image of Adam, recognizing Adam as a literal human, as a real person, not, not some mythical figure, not some made up character to tell a story, but that he actually existed. And then he says, you know, in the same way Yeshua came as the second Adam and that we're going to be made in his likeness. And so, you know, Paul's doing the same thing with, with Adam. And I had actually had a professor in college who in one of the classes he said that, well, the story of Noah's Ark is, you know, he basically said Genesis 1 through 11 are just made up stories, fairy tales didn't actually happen. They have theological significance, but they weren't real. And he went on and he talked about how Noah's ark, he's, you know, he said how every, every people group around the world has a creation story. Every people group around the world has a flood story. You know, every people group around the world has some sort of story about how languages were divided. And so that's basically Genesis 1 through 11. You had the, the creation of, of the earth and man. You had the flood and then you have the Tower of Babel. And he basically said, well, you know, we see these stories in all these different religions and people groups around the world. So most likely it was just made up. And my, my response to that was no. If, if it exists in every people group around the world, that means that there's truth in that. And that came from somewhere that it must have really happened. There must have been a creation account. There must have been an original man, There must have been a flood. There must have been some place where the language were divided. Because every people group and every religion in the world has some sort of story similar to that. Even though they may vary and they may be different. They all have that nugget of truth in there to say that this, there is. There is an original somewhere in here. And, you know, so when we have Moses come along and say, this is what God told me happened, then we say, well, okay, well, we're going to take Moses word for it, because Moses spoke to God face to face. And so these other stories passed down to hearsay.

Absolutely. It's such a good point. And Yeshua, where Jesus referred back to Moses and he said, do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope for. If you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will he believe my words? Yeshua is literally pointing to Moses as being an authoritative figure whose words should be trusted, just as his words should be trusted. That means that, like, we can, you know, if we're talking about what do we trust? Trust, Yeshua. And if you trust Jesus, you should trust whom he says you should trust, which is the writings of Moses, the prophets, and also those apostles that he appointed to convey his message and witness to the world.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, brother, thank you so much. This has been so good. You know, we're coming to the end of this. Is there any last thoughts that you have on this matter as we close up the night?

I think that we kind of mentioned it, but we didn't actually get into it. Was the canon formed by council? And you quoted somebody from that? And I just wanted to speak to that as well. The Council of Nicaea, which was the 4th century, is where most people reference, and they say this is where the canon was solidified. All they basically did at the council was, was come to an agreement that these texts that have been in circulation and in use as scripture for the last 400 years, we're just affirming them and saying, yes, we agree that these are scripture. They were already established by the apostles as scripture, and they were circulated in the church as scripture for 400 years before the Council of Nicaea came along. And the count, all the Council of Nicaea did is they said, yes, we affirm that these books that were in circulation from the Apostles, those are the canon of Scripture and nothing else. And all they were doing is just saying, we're just making sure everybody's on the same page on this. They didn't decide which books were scripture. Those books had already been in circulation of Scripture and treated as scripture for 400 years. They just affirmed that and agreed with that is all they did.

Yeah. And the. Where this all comes from, by the way, for anyone listening, wondering, that book called the Da Vinci Code, I think it's around 2003, was what popularized this idea that Constantine of Nicaea at that council established, figured out what's going to be in this, this Bible. Actually, it was at the Council of Trent where they only like, like Lex just said, where they. Just. Because of the Reformation, they came and said, okay, well, we need to now make a decision. Because the Reformers didn't want some of. They wanted to hold to the same canon as what the Jewish people were holding to. And so some of the apocrypha, they didn't want in. And so then the Catholic Church comes together at Trent, and then now they're establishing, well, we are gonna have the deuter canonical, forgive my tongue books in this, in this canon.

But it's not 14, 14th or 15th century, I think. Something like that.

Yeah. Nice. I don't, I don't remember exactly, but yeah, it was.

Yeah, it was. It was much, much later when the Catholic Church decided to bring the apocrypha in. They were, they were reading from him, citing it, but they hadn't officially canonized it until, you know, like you said, the Council of Trent.

Yeah. And even that was controversial among Catholic people. Those books were still being disputed up until that point in terms of if it's to be Scripture. There's definitely value, though, in them all, historically at least. But is it in sparse scriptures in other situations?

Right. Yeah, that's the question. Is it inspired or is it just important? Is it valuable? Does it have historical value in it? Yes. Is it inspired Scripture? No. And that's, that's what we have to say about the external extra biblical books. Yes. That value. But it's not Scripture.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Lex. You. You gave us a lot to think about. You on a lot of things I learned tonight. Thank you for coming on and sharing about this with us. Can you share how people can find out more of your content?

Sure. So I'm on YouTube. I have two YouTube channels. One is Unlearn the Lies and the other is the Grafted Church. And I also have a website, unlearnedthelies.com and grafted faith. And so you can, you can go to either of those places and find all kinds of information, videos, resources, things that I've written all kinds of stuff on there. So contact information, whatever you look for.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Lex. And guys, thank you for joining us tonight. If you want to see more of our video, subscribe like this video. And you can also text Yeshua to 94000 to get text notifications for our live streams. But we can't wait to see you guys in the next one. Next week, we plan to continue talking more about this, and we want to talk about what about the different canons that exist among different denominations. We're going to talk more about the Apocrypha and what do we do with them and more. So stay tuned for that. We'll see you guys in the next one. Shalom.

Sa.