#36: John 7:53-8:11 and the Canon of Scripture

This week on Beyond the Pulpit we dive into the formation of the biblical canon by examining the passage of John 7:53-8:11 (the woman caught in adultery) and exploring how we can trust the reliability of scripture despite textual questions surrounding certain passages.

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Transcript

Introduction to Beyond the Pulpit

Derek Wadle 0:03

Welcome to Beyond the Pulpit, exploring the life and ministry of Walnut Creek Church. Downtown Walnut Creek Church exists to glorify God by making authentic disciples of Jesus Christ who love and worship Him in all they do. Well, all right, welcome to Beyond the Pulpit. My name is Derek Wadle and I'm joined here Luke Hukee

Derek Wadle 0:20

.

Luke Hukee 0:21

Hey, everyone

Derek Wadle 0:21

and Dan Rude.

Dan Rude 0:24

Good morning everyone.

Derek Wadle 0:24

This last week at church we dove into John, chapter 7, verse 53 through 8, 11.

Luke Hukee 0:32

Here we go.

Derek Wadle 0:33

And right before you started preaching, Dan, you talked about these pesky little brackets that show up in your Bible. That says that this passage doesn't show up in some of the earliest manuscripts and that there's some debate surrounding it about whether or not it belongs in the canon of scripture.

Dan Rude 0:50

Yeah, yeah, that was you know, as I was getting ready to preach. You know, usually I spend most of my time studying the passage, and I did study the passage this week for the record.

Dan Rude 1:01

but I spent.

Derek Wadle 1:03

There's some evidence of that.

Dan Rude 1:04

I did study the passage this week for the record but I spent a lot of time researching whether or not I thought I think this passage should be in the Bible, which I've never done that with one passage in the Bible in my life, like I've considered something, thought about something, but I've never really deeply wrestled with that question over any passage of the Bible, and part of what made this maybe was a little bit of a setup was that we took Luke and I. We took a seminary class, a New Testament class at Midwestern Western. We had a professor that walked through some of the debated passages and he made the case as to why this text it's called the PA pericope adulterate the.

Dan Rude 1:51

PA should not be considered the scripture. And I was sitting there and I'm just kind of listening and I'm like all right, okay, it kind of makes sense, and so I just kind of moved on and I thought that was going to be my approach when I came to this text and then I realized there's a whole other argument, like a giant other argument that's made by people I deeply respect, and so that kind of.

Three Stages of the Biblical Canon

Dan Rude 2:14

I said I got to think about this more. So that's what I did this week. But it really is a big question, because if you go to a college a non-Christian college question because if you go to a college, if you go to a college, a non-Christian college you're probably going to have a professor who's teaching Some form of religion yeah, religion or history or something and he's going to be like how many of you idiots believe in the Bible? And this is why you shouldn't believe in the Bible.

Dan Rude 2:37

And he's going to try to talk. You know, talk you out of believing in the Bible, and sometimes this gets used soap.

Derek Wadle 2:44

Maybe like Bart Ehrman arguing about you know variations. Oh yeah, this type of passage. Yeah, did you know?

Dan Rude 2:51

there are hundreds of thousands of variations in the Bible.

Derek Wadle 2:53

Derek no 300,000 according to Bart Ehrman, yeah.

Dan Rude 2:57

Yeah, I know it's wild stuff. So, yeah, it was kind of an interesting week and so I thought it could be good. We thought it could be good to just answer the question of, like, what is the canon? What do we mean by canon? What do we mean by canon? And yeah, so I'm going to walk through this real quick and we can dialogue, debate it, think through it. But someone named Dr Michael Kruger he wrote a book on this and I'm going to steal everything that I'm about ready to say it comes from Dr Michael Kruger or FF Bruce, if there's anything insightful.

Derek Wadle 3:41

I once heard another pastor say that all the best preachers are plagiarists. Oh man, I don't know what to do with that.

Dan Rude 3:50

Okay, so he talks a little bit about. Dr Michael Kruger talks about the three stages of the canon and he's speaking specifically of the New Testament canon. So stage one is what's called the ontological canon, and this stage is answering the question where does the Bible come from, and particularly where does the New Testament? Where does the Bible come from? So how do you answer that question? What's your immediate response to that question? Where does the Bible come from God? It comes from God, it comes from God, and so it would be right for us to say it's like the question in Sunday school.

Derek Wadle 4:22

Jesus, jesus.

Luke Hukee 4:23

Yeah, I think my first question is actually like would be right for us to say it's like the question sunday school jesus, jesus.

Derek Wadle 4:25

Yeah. I think my first question is actually like uh, what's ontology?

Dan Rude 4:28

yeah that's a different podcast. That's right.

Luke Hukee 4:32

That's right is that a kind of like? It sounds like a kind of surgery. It's like a disease it has to do with beginnings, yeah, origins, yeah.

Derek Wadle 4:40

Where does it come from? Where does it come from?

Dan Rude 4:41

yeah, yeah yeah and uh. And so I think it would be right to say that the scriptures are. They are a work of God and a work of man. So it would be true to say that men wrote the Bible and it would be true to say God wrote the Bible, but its ultimate foundation is God. It comes from God. It comes from God. And so when did the early church have the New Testament canon? When it was written? It was when it was written. That's the answer. So when these letters, these different books of the Bible were written, the church had the canon. And what that means is that God has either spoken or he's not spoken. And if he's spoken, then that means that his word is his word, whether anyone knows about it or recognizes it. And if God has not spoken, we could put all the letters and all the books into something called a holy book or the scriptures. But if God has not spoken, then it doesn't matter at all it doesn't matter at all.

Dan Rude 5:40

And so stage one is the ontological canon. Where does it come from? It comes from God, written by God, written by men. And so as soon as the ink was dry on the papyrus or the scroll or the animal skin or whatever it is, that is the word of God. And then he has stage two, which is called the functional canon. The functional canon. And the functional canon answers the question when did the church have the canon? So it's like when did these letters start to the letters in the Bible, the New Testament Bible? When did they start to be used? And the answer is in the first century.

Derek Wadle 6:21

As soon as it was received by the church in Corinth Exactly. Or Colossae Exactly, colossi Exactly.

Dan Rude 6:26

Yeah, some people say that you know that the writers of the New Testament. They didn't know that they were writing the Bible, they were just writing some thoughts, just like we write thoughts to each other, just journaling. Yeah, it's just a nice journal entry, dear journal.

Luke Hukee 6:38

Dear journal, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

Dan Rude 6:46

No one comes to the father, yeah yeah, you know one dumb idea anyway. One person I read this week said that Paul would be rolling in his grave if he heard that people today thought he was writing the very word of God. Like Paul had no intention of writing scripture and it's like well he certainly writes like somebody else. I think, if you just read like a little bit of the New Testament you're like nah, they knew, they knew yeah. So, it's that the authors of the New Testament knew they were writing scripture.

Luke Hukee 7:20

I mean Paul says that I'm writing scripture. He's inspired by God. That's right. Breated out in Timothy. That's right.

Derek Wadle 7:27

He clarifies the one point where he says I, paul, say this Lord. It gets clear and even that he knows.

Dan Rude 7:35

He knows, he says I'm writing to the very commands of God. And if people do not recognize this. You should reject them.

Luke Hukee 7:40

I mean Paul, he's speaking on the behalf of God, if you will. So it's like it's clear he knew what he was doing. He knew, he knew and Peter knew.

Dan Rude 7:47

Peter knew. And so the canon of scripture, the New Testament. Letters were received by the church in the first century. When they received the letters, they actually knew this was the very word of God. And then the stage three. Dr Kruger, he uses two different words so you might see it differently, but he talks about the final canon. So stage three is the final canon, and in the fourth century there was an ecumenical council that came together, an ecumenical council meaning Christians together and an ecumenical council meaning Christians from different parts of the world. So the East and the West and North Africa, they gathered together. And they gathered together because they saw a threat.

Luke Hukee 8:38

Yeah, that's what Dan Brown you know, didn't he write the Da Vinci Code? The Da Vinci Code yep.

Derek Wadle 8:42

Didn't he write the Da Vinci Code, the Da?

Dan Rude 8:42

Vinci Code yep yeah, he paints a picture like no one even knew what the Bible was, until the fourth century that's not true, utter nonsense.

Derek Wadle 8:54

It's utter nonsense Because even, yeah, like before this, you look at the church fathers in the centuries prior, you can reconstruct basically the entire New Testament from their writings and what they're quoting and all of that. And that matters because it's like Polycarp he was the Apostle John's disciple. Yeah, that's right. Titus was Paul's disciple, that's right, so it's like. These are the church fathers we're talking about. That's right.

Dan Rude 9:20

That's right. And these church fathers, they understood that the church already had a canon. Justin Martyr, he said this in the year 150 AD. So the Apostle John, I think he died about 100, roughly 100 AD and he wrote this in 150. So I mean 50 years after John, but that's pretty close. He says, on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together and the memoirs of the apostles and if you keep reading his quote, that's Matthew, mark, luke and John, the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits.

Early Church Recognition of Scripture

Dan Rude 10:00

So in the first century what people were doing for churches? They were gathering and they were reading the Matthew, mark, luke and John in the writing of the prophets as long as time permits. And so they knew early on these are the scriptures and you keep reading them. And he talks about Paul's letters and it's incredible. So anyways. So what are we talking about by the final canon or the closed canon? It's that there's the ecumenical council near the end of the fourth century in like 370-something I don't remember off the top of my head when church leaders from East, west and North Africa gathered together because they discerned a threat to the gospel and to the church. It's that people were trying to add to the scriptures.

Luke Hukee 10:50

You have these other books starting to pop up, claiming to be divine. What were some of those books? The Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary.

Dan Rude 10:57

Apocalypse of Peter.

Luke Hukee 10:58

Apocalypse of Peter so all kinds of different writings. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Rude 11:02

And there's one book called the Gospel of the Twelve. That's a great title, the Gospel of the Twelve. That was written like by Judas, by Judas.

Luke Hukee 11:17

Or like the Testament of Abraham that like shows up in like the third century Exactly. I think Abraham died a long time before that. He died well before that. Yeah.

Derek Wadle 11:27

You know, at least a copy of the letter survived. That's right.

Dan Rude 11:31

That's right. And so people were arguing that these other books should be considered part of the Bible. And so these, all these church leaders from the church, east, west and Africa, they gathered and they said they looked at each other and they said these aren't the Bible. Right, gospel of Tom is not the Bible. And then they looked at each other and they said this is what we have, this is the canon, this is the scripture, this is God's word.

Derek Wadle 11:54

This is what I've been teaching. This is what we've been teaching. Yes, and there's agreement.

Dan Rude 11:59

There's agreement. And so it would be wrong to say that that council decided on the canon. That would be the wrong way to put it. They just recognized it. Rather, they recognized it and they Affirmed it, affirmed it. And one example Michael Kruger uses, which I think is helpful, is he says if someone said, why did you pick your parents, what would you say? I didn't, I did not, I know, but yeah, you're just deciding that you know Bruce and Julie Hookie are your parents, luke, you decided. You would say that's the dumbest argument ever. You're not. You didn't decide, you didn't pick your parents. Rather, you recognized, you recognized your parents. These are my parents. Pick your parents, rather, you recognized you recognize your parents.

Dan Rude 12:44

These are my parents and so, in the same way, east West and the African church at the time, mainly in Northern Africa, they gathered together and they said it's these books that gave birth to the church and we were recognizing this is the very word of God and really the gathering was to make sure the gospel of Thomas, gospel of Peter, would not be included and from that moment on it seems like that was a settled issue. But if you say well, the church didn't have a canon until the fourth century, then that means the first, second, third century church didn't have a canon. But that's not true at all.

Derek Wadle 13:23

That's not the case at all.

Dan Rude 13:27

So those three stages of the canon I think are very helpful to understand. Now another quick question is I shouldn't say quick, but what criteria did the early church use to discern whether or not a letter was actually a scripture part of the canon? And this is where Michael Kruger he talks about this Again. He has four categories. Do you guys know what they are?

Derek Wadle 13:54

Yes, I do Primarily because we talked about this just before we hit record.

Dan Rude 14:01

They are early, they're early. One's early, one's early, yes.

Luke Hukee 14:06

The year in which they're written. When were they written, yep?

Dan Rude 14:08

Yep, yeah. So Michael Kruger says this is the criteria he would use if he was talking with his neighbor who doesn't know Christ. Right, there's more technical language that you can find in books, and so that's totally right and good, but he's just describing For the lay person For the lay person.

Dan Rude 14:23

You know was it early? And there's no doubt, matthew, mark, luke, john, they were all written in the first century. Really, all of the books written in the Bible or in the New Testament were written by the end of the first century, right? Yep, which is really important. Yeah, why is it important?

Luke Hukee 14:38

Well, because the earlier they are written, the more than they could be cooperated. There are people who are alive who could attest to this actually happened or didn't. So when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says you can go ask everybody else, did this happen or not? That's right. There are actually people you could go and say did this happen? Did this happen or not? That's right. There are actually people you could go and say did this happen? Did Jesus appear to 500 of you, or whatever? So, so that would be really important. Whereas if they're written, you know, in the third or fourth century, there's no one alive to really attest to whether or not those events actually took place, exactly, exactly.

Luke Hukee 15:11

Yeah, so it's early. Right, it was. So. The closer to the date of the event you always the natural assumption is this has veracity, like it's true, like today. That's how even my understanding of writings of antiquity, the closer they are to the date.

Derek Wadle 15:26

The historicity of all of it. Yeah, so yeah.

Luke Hukee 15:31

Early Early and being written within the first century. It's huge, it's huge.

Dan Rude 15:37

Category number two. Criteria number two is eyewitnesses, so it's early and then early eyewitnesses, so it was written by the apostles and the more technical term is is that it bears apostolicity, it's apostolic, which I forgot how to say that word. At the third service I had apostolicity in my head and I'm like that's not the word. Oh no.

Derek Wadle 15:59

What's the word? Oh no, never done that before. Just staring at it, I don't know how to read anymore. I don't know what I'm doing.

Dan Rude 16:07

I've said apostolic 1,000 times this week. I can't even think anymore. Anyways but, it was early eyewitnesses and it was coming from the apostles or their companions. And how do we know?

Luke Hukee 16:23

Many of them. They saw the resurrected Christ.

Dan Rude 16:25

They saw the resurrected Christ.

Four Criteria for Canon Inclusion

Luke Hukee 16:26

So the writers of the New Testament, people who saw Jesus alive in those 40 days that he was on earth. That's right, that's really important.

Dan Rude 16:34

Yeah, yeah, I mean Paul, he, he saw the resurrected Christ, peter, all these people I mean, they saw, they were. They're not just early, yeah, they're early eyewitnesses, or they were companions of the eyewitnesses, like Luke, like Luke, like the gospel of Luke, or Mark, who was close companions with Peter. So it's they were early and they're early eyewitnesses. And how do we know you could do this with, like all of the authors of the New Testament, but like, how do you know that John wrote the gospel of John? Well, this is what's so interesting is that John had friends and disciples.

Dan Rude 17:14

So, like Polycarp, like you already mentioned Polycarp. Polycarp says John wrote it. Like I know John and John wrote it. Irenaeus, who was close companions with Polycarp. Irenaeus says John wrote it Like this is the work of John and it was understood. And so you could keep going through the eyewitness testimony, not just of the life of Jesus, but there are eyewitness. There's eyewitness testimony, there's real testimony of the authorship. Like people knew Paul and they wrote about Paul's letters.

Dan Rude 17:46

I mean it's crazy just how these are all verified. So the early church was like okay, so it's early, early eyewitness. And then the letters. This is category number three. The letters lack embellishment. They lack embellishment or they're historically accurate, and so when people push for Ie they're not the Book of Mormon.

Luke Hukee 18:07

They're not the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon, amen. This has massive embellishment. Oh, it's crazy, crazy stuff, different conversation, whole other conversation. If you want some embellishment, there you go there it is.

Dan Rude 18:21

So it lacks embellishment, like the gospel, the gospel of Peter, which was not early, not coming from eyewitness, even though it's called the gospel of Peter, but it's not the gospel of Peter.

Derek Wadle 18:31

It's not the gospel of Peter, it's a pseudepigraphal yes it's the five dollar. It's like someone wrote it inside Peter's name too, because they're trying to gain some traction.

Dan Rude 18:40

Totally.

Luke Hukee 18:41

And then they were looking for likes.

Derek Wadle 18:44

That's right. It was early social media, that's right.

Luke Hukee 18:47

They're looking for a deal financial deal.

Derek Wadle 18:49

Leave what Peter wrote here.

Luke Hukee 18:52

What little Uncle Pete wrote.

Dan Rude 18:56

But like in the Gospel of Peter, if you read it you find out that this guy who whoever wrote the gospel of Peter was an eyewitness of the resurrection of Jesus. So he was there. And you know, jesus, when he comes out of the grave, he doesn't just come out of the grave, the cross gets up with him and comes out of the grave with him, and the cross starts to talk and Jesus is 60 feet tall. And then people are asking the cross questions, and so when people read that, they're like this is just filled with embellishment.

Luke Hukee 19:30

I don't know that sounds pretty.

Dan Rude 19:33

I mean you have a little faith. I'm just saying they're like no, this doesn't sound right or it has historical inaccuracies. It has names, wrong cities, wrong Dates, wrong Dates wrong. Yeah, names that would never.

Luke Hukee 19:49

they're like Egyptian names Exactly. I think it's the Gospel of Thomas, for example, and those names would never have been.

Dan Rude 19:55

that would never have happened Been a part of, yeah, yeah, part example, and those names would never have been a part of the culture. Westhoff does a lot of speaking. Westhoff is awesome, he's awesome. And then category number four is that these letters were received by the church.

Derek Wadle 20:09

When you say received, it doesn't mean physically handed to Right.

Dan Rude 20:13

Or affirmed as scripture.

Dan Rude 20:16

So, like in the fourth century, when that ecumenical council got together, these leaders from different parts of the world, they believed in Christ, they understood Jesus to be the son of God, truly man, truly God. And they got together and they're looking at some of these other letters and they're like wait a second. So we can look back in church history even at that time and say, wait a second. You know, the gospel of Thomas was never received by any of the churches. So they look at each other and be like, hey, you down in northern Africa, ethiopia and Egypt, have any of those churches ever thought about the gospel of Thomas as being scripture? And they're like nope.

Dan Rude 20:59

And then you kind of go throughout the rest of the known world and no one received these books. And so they were rejected. And they were rejected largely because, one, no one knew about them at the time and second, they did not conform to the already established scriptures, they were not orthodox, they didn't line up with the scriptures, and so that's a little bit about okay, how did these books get into the Bible? And there's much more.

Derek Wadle 21:24

Oh, my goodness.

Dan Rude 21:25

Yeah, there's far more. We're going to run out of time. We're getting there.

The Debate Over John 7:53-8:11

Derek Wadle 21:31

So the question though. So we talked through. So what about John 7? What about John 7, 53?

Dan Rude 21:38

through 8, 11?. What are we?

Derek Wadle 21:39

supposed to do with that. Okay, so maybe the question is why some think it is scripture and others say it's not so.

Luke Hukee 21:48

John MacArthur no. Rc Sproul yes. Ff Bruce no, daniel Wallace, no. Ff Bruce no. Daniel Wallace, yes, daniel Wallace, no. You have great men on both sides of the aisle saying different things. Yeah, so some people. Yeah, help us. Yeah, yes. So some yeah like you said, if you could solve that conundrum.

Derek Wadle 22:09

Solve it for us now, oh my goodness, oh my goodness.

Dan Rude 22:20

I just, you know, reading all these guys' work over the last couple weeks, it just makes me feel very dumb, like there's so much I don't know about this.

Derek Wadle 22:24

Oh man, I don't even have to read those, yeah okay, so why did?

Dan Rude 22:29

why I'm gonna, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna give what I think is the john piper, john mcarthur case as to why this text should not be in the canon, and it's actually very simple. Okay, so the earliest manuscripts do not have the PA. The pericope adulterate, it's not in there.

Dan Rude 22:50

Okay, so that's what they. So then it leads them to the conclusion If John did not write it, it is not apostolic, and if it's not written by one of the apostles or an associate of the apostles, it's therefore not inspired and it's not part of the canon. So that argument is very simple. Like it's very simple, it's clean in my head, I'm prone to accepting simplicity.

Derek Wadle 23:19

it's not unreasonable, it's not unreasonable.

Dan Rude 23:21

It makes really good sense and um, and that's why I think it's compelling. I think that's why it leads a lot of people to say this story doesn't belong.

Luke Hukee 23:31

The pericope adultery is out of the canon and to to be to be clear, most people agree this story happened. Correct that it took place.

Dan Rude 23:41

It's just whether or not it's actually inspired.

Luke Hukee 23:43

Yeah.

Dan Rude 23:44

Yeah, yeah. And you do some more research and there there there's a just the fact that it's not in the the two earliest manuscripts. And then, on top of that, none of the church fathers write about this passage as belonging to the gospel of John.

Derek Wadle 24:03

Or as if John wrote it. As if John wrote it and they wrote commentaries on it.

Dan Rude 24:07

I think Dan Wallace says there are over a million words written by the church fathers on the scriptures and none of the church fathers, like from the first and second century, wrote about the PA as canon. So they write about it sometimes but they don't write about it as canon, as belonging to John's gospel. So then they would say that's even another reason, so it's not in the earliest manuscripts the church fathers didn't write about it as canon. And then the third reason probably is that it's a floating text. So once it starts to appear in the manuscripts, what you see is that sometimes it's earlier in John, sometimes it's later in John and sometimes it's even in the Gospel of Luke. So they just say all these question marks, you go, no, get it out. All these question marks, you go, no, get it out.

Derek Wadle 24:57

And if you like take it out of. Like West South will argue that if you take it out of where it's at John that John flows actually way better. The flow of the narrative actually flows.

Luke Hukee 25:06

It seems to disrupt the narrative, it seems to disrupt the narrative.

Dan Rude 25:09

Yep, so that's yeah, so that's, that's the argument and it's compelling, and I think people are are well, they're standing on good ground to think that way yeah, and so now I'm going to give you the rc sprawl case.

Dan Rude 25:23

Okay, everybody for it? Yeah, um, so here's the rc sprawl case, is, he would say, or the ff bruce case. He would say um, first, um, there are two manuscripts, early manuscripts that don't contain it, and those manuscripts are early, like they're good, they're good and they're early, but there are two, there are two manuscripts and now some people say they're too early.

Luke Hukee 25:59

I misspoke.

Dan Rude 25:59

I misspoke, I misspoke, I misspoke. There are two early from the first and second century manuscripts that don't have it, don't have it. And then there are a couple of others from the early fourth century that don't have it. But then, once you get to the year 400 AD, it shows up and it's called. It's in what is called the Codex Washingtonian-ness or something.

Luke Hukee 26:26

Codex W. Could they just have like easier names like Codex.

Dan Rude 26:28

Washington. I know that one is in the United States. Actually you can go see it, the Bible Museum, I think. Right, yeah, yeah, it's, it's awesome and that that one is really excellent.

Dan Rude 26:38

So that manuscript is really excellent and it has it. And then you start to look at manuscripts after the year 400 and more and more of them have it and then it becomes part of the majority text. So then from the year 400 on you find it in 1400 manuscripts. So it has been discovered 1400 manuscripts. And another little detail is that Jerome. And another little detail is that Jerome. So Jerome was one of the text experts in the fifth century and he's the one who gave us the Latin Vulgate, and so he loved the scriptures. He was doing textual criticism like way back then, Before anyone called it textual criticism.

Dan Rude 27:22

Yeah, exactly yes. And so what, jerome? The testimony of Jerome is that he says that he is aware of earlier manuscripts in Greek and Latin that have the PA in the Gospel of John. So the testimony of Jerome is he said he's the guy who's looking at all these manuscripts. And he says there are manuscripts of the gospel of John, with the PA in them. And then you, and then you go to Augustine, who is arguably the greatest theologian ever, and he's, he is certainly a thanks to Paul, I mean but some people say he's the greatest theologian ever, and he is certainly a.

Derek Wadle 28:02

You may be next to Paul.

Luke Hukee 28:02

I mean besides no, I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying, but some people say he's the greatest theologian ever.

Dan Rude 28:06

Besides you know the apostles, and at least certainly at that time, and there was a debate even back then does the PA belong? And Augustine's like, absolutely it belongs. It is part of the gospel of John and he used it in a variety of different fronts, in a variety of different ways. He preached on it, he wrote on it, he defended it. You ask Ambrose? Ambrose, is it the scripture or does it belong in the canon? Ambrose, in like 376, does it belong? Yes, it belongs, it is part of the Gospel of John and it belongs in the canon. And so there's this.

Dan Rude 28:44

There is a little bit of debate here over whether or not. So, like RC Sproul would say well, jerome thinks it's in, augustine thinks it's in, ambrose thinks it's in. And then there's this aspect where RC Sproul says it's not only a human work, it is the work of God and it was received by the scriptures or by the church. That this text, throughout you get to the 5th century and then 6th century, 7th, all the way through, it was received by the church, it was affirmed by the church through. It was received by the church, it was affirmed by the church. And so he would say he just trusts that in the sovereignty of God and the wisdom of God that he preserved it. On top of that, like you said earlier, luke, nobody doubts, nobody questions whether or not it's an authentic event. It has all the markings.

Dan Rude 29:35

It has all the markings of an authentic.

Derek Wadle 29:38

There's no embellishments, there's no like. It's totally in line with the character and nature of Jesus.

Luke Hukee 29:44

Exactly, and it fits with the rebuking of the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, which is what John is doing a lot of Totally and the argument.

Dan Rude 29:55

There are two big arguments against the inclusion of this text in the Bible. Against the inclusion of this text in the Bible. The first is that or not big, but two additional arguments against the inclusion of this text into the gospel of John or in the canon. The first is the language. So people, they cite the language. I think that's baloney personally. And because if you do that same exercise on John chapter two, john chapter 9, john chapter whatever, and you just look at the argument and you just look at different texts, you say wait a second, he uses words all over the place that are only used in that text. So if you say, well, it doesn't belong here because he uses words that only belong in this text, then that would lead you to think that there are other texts in the Gospel of John that don't belong as well, or that it would cause you to question it. The second argument that gets used is that it disrupts the flow of the Gospel of John.

Arguments For and Against Inclusion

Dan Rude 30:53

Now, I've read it and I've thought about it and I've read it and I've thought about it. I think that's just totally baloney personally. It's totally baloney, that's. And the reason is John is establishing a pattern. The pattern is event teaching, event teaching, event teaching. So the way it goes is Nicodemus event teaching, the woman at the well teaching, teaching the woman at the well teaching. Chapter five there's the man in the portico that Jesus heals teaching. There's the feeding of the 5,000,.

Dan Rude 31:34

John chapter six, teaching John. Chapter seven there's the exchange with his brothers teaching. Now, if you just cut this story out, you go from teaching to teaching. Then you go to chapter 9, he heals the man born blind, teaching, and then this is the pattern all the way through. Then you get to John, chapter 11, there's the story you know he raises Lazarus from the dead, and then you go to chapter 12. There's the anointing of the feet and then there's the event when Jesus gets down and washes the disciples' feet. So it just like the actual flow of the text.

Dan Rude 32:16

It gets weirder, in my opinion, if you don't have it, because in chapter 8, maybe I'm getting too technical but in chapter 8, if you go from chapter 7 to John 8, verse 12, jesus spoke to them again. Who are they? Who's the them? The Pharisees. But you don't know that because at the end of chapter 7, at the end of chapter 7, it's this group of people you know where. Jesus is not even there. So it's like wait a second, the story gets interrupted.

Dan Rude 32:51

So I what I'm doing is I'm everything I just said is the arguments of FF, bruce and other people. So if anything sounds compelling, it's definitely. This is just why there's a debate. This is just why there's a debate over the passage, so there's much more to say, and so this is not the type of thing where we should divide over. In fact, I think these little brackets have comforted me a lot this week, because all the other places in the Bible where there are no brackets, it means that scholars don't have any question on whether or not it should be included, and it's because there are countless men and women who have, you know, spent their lives studying, researching, looking at the manuscripts to figure out what has God actually said to us Totally.

Luke Hukee 33:44

Yeah, it's like there it, and it seems like, whether you, um, whether you fall on the side of it is or it is not, because, like, I get why people would teach this as it is and I don't think you're, you're not going to stray from any doctrine. There's no new doctrine being introduced here. Nope opinion about whether or not this is or it isn't. I don't think, like, if you do teach on it like, you land on the side of I think this is scripture and teach on it as scripture You're going to. There's no problems created. There's no problems. So, which is also comforting because it it. It's not if it was like introducing something new that's obviously.

Dan Rude 34:34

Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

Derek Wadle 34:36

Yeah, wait a second or Jesus rose from the dead, 60 foot tall yeah exactly, then you have some major issues.

Luke Hukee 34:42

So I think there's definitely room. As you can see, with there's many great men who have disagreed over whether or not it is or it is not canon. And yet if you, whether you agree or disagree, or whether you hold to the side of that, it is canon or it's not, it's like I think you're in safe territory either way and you're not going to traverse into some dangerous theology or doctrine that is going to lead you astray or lead others astray Totally.

Luke Hukee 35:14

So at the end of the day, that gives me some comfort too. I think they're good arguments both ways, totally. I don't know, I tend to lean on the side, like lean more that it's not, but that is not like, uh, I haven't spent hours and hours and hours and hours of research, but it is interesting when early church fathers did not comment on it and they wrote about all the other verses around John, but not this passage, um, and then there it does appear later in church history, in the manuscript. So there there is like I think that's what gives me definitely in naturally anybody probably the most pause, cause you're like, just because it was accepted later on by the majority doesn't mean it should have been necessarily Totally so. It's hardly not. That's the that's not the only argument, obviously, and I do think like the argument of it it not fitting, like I was reading it this week and I was like, well, I don't, I don't think that like that's like it's not that it doesn't fit it in my mind. It I get what people say, um, that you can jump from verse 52 to verse 12, but I don't think it's like in my opinion which is just my opinion that it's like a slam door, like strong argument, like people make it sound like there's just.

Finding Peace with Scriptural Questions

Luke Hukee 36:31

If you read this, if you read these verses, you would just naturally assume it had to have been added because it makes no sense. And you're like that's not the way it reads Totally. But people act that I know the way. No sense. And you're like that's not the way it reads Totally, but people act that I know the way it gets stated. You're like it just doesn't at all fit in the passage. I'm like, well, I actually don't think it does. I think it fits fine. If I didn't know this was not included in the early manuscripts, I would not even think anything about it.

Derek Wadle 36:54

Most of those arguments come from looking at the Greek.

Luke Hukee 36:57

It does.

Derek Wadle 36:58

So it's like in English they don't come from.

Dan Rude 37:00

Looking at the Greek, I know it doesn't come. It comes from the starting point that it doesn't belong. Sure it starts there. Then it's a secondary argument because of the Greek, because, like in John chapter 2, in John chapter 2, it's so interesting In John chapter 2, you take some there. In John chapter 2, it's so interesting In John chapter 2, you take some. There's a text here. In that text, if you apply the same standard, you'd say this text is not John, because it differs even more in the Greek than this text. And then there's another one in John 9, another one like John. I don't remember. I'm not a Greek expert, but it's interesting. It's interesting because Greek scholars debate it like a lot.

Dan Rude 37:40

So it's interesting and it's something it's fun to think about and go back and forth, but at the end of the day, this is God's word. I mean we get to hold it and read it and consider it and, by God's grace, we can live by it. Thanks for watching.