Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome back to this third part of our study of the six key areas to unity in the Body of Messiah.

As with the baptism and prayer sermon last week, when I refused to get into a discussion on what the 'correct' modes of baptism or prayer ougtht to be, we're not going to study the canon or 'do theology' either when it comes to the Scriptures.

Rather, what I want to do this week and next - because this particular topic will take us a little time - is ask such questions as: How did the ancients approach Scripture? Did they handle the written Davar (Word) in the same way that we do in the 21st century? What is the mature and consistent way to handle the Bible? If these seem strange questions at first - and I realise they are not the ones you are accustomed to hearing me ask - then please bear with me as I resume making a concrete effort to clear away not just my personal 'back shelves' but those which we as a fellowship have put on the back burner to deal with on a 'rainy day'. Well, we have run out of 'rainy days', the shelves are too cluttered, and we need to have everything 'out front' so that in the future we are not ambushed by either our history or unresolved questions that need to be answered if we are to 'do' and 'live' a consistent Christianity.

By way of an introduction and a challenge, let me share a passage of Scripture with you and rewrite it in a way that might make sense to a section of the Body of Messiah that has now been around for 500 years:

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to the books that you're all going to write and which will become the New Testament and you will call this new doctrine Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone."

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me" (Matt.28:18, NIV).

Most thoughtful Protestants would tell you that the toqef or authority of Yah'shua (Jesus) is somehow exercised though the New Testament, and by extension, the whole Bible [1]. But in order to get to that clearly recognisable Reformation position, Christians went through a long historical journey first, one that most believers have never heard of because it has never been taught them, unless you happen to be into that sort of thing. However, the history of the way we have viewed our Bibles over the centuries is very important to understand, which means we should very carefully check the assumptions we and our ancestors made along the way. In my case, it's my Anglican forefathers.

I think if you were to ask most Protestants if they believe the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is equally authoritative and valid, that they would unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative. But when you point out, for example, that "Paul is shrill in his insistance that the ancient command to circumcise is no longer relevent for followers of Jesus (Yah'shua)" [2] a tumult often arises in the Body and believers start splitting off into parties, sects and denominations.

Here are some fairly typical reactions that you are going to meet in the theological market place that I encounter all the time in my dealings with different kinds of believers:

• 1. One group of 'moderate' Protestants will stand up and say that, in addition to circumcision, the sabbath and the food laws no longer having any current authority, that the Letter to the Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that the detailed regulations about the Temple and the sacrificial system have been made redundant by the single sacrifice of Christ, the great High Priest;

• 2. Another group of 'radical' Protestants will stand up and, taking a particular English translation of Paul literally, which reads "Christ is the end of the law (Torah)" (Rom.10:4, KJV), insist that this gives them sweeping power to ignore anything and everything in the Old Testament (Tanakh);

• 3. Next the 'moderate' Messianics come scurrying onto the scene in a panic and point out that while indeed the Letter to the Hebrews correctly points out Christ fulfilled the Levitical sacrificial system, there is nothing about circumcicion or the sabbath or the Kashrut food laws being abolished for Jews - only Gentiles or non-Jews no longer have to observe these things;

• 4. Then some more 'radical' messianics come violently roaring onto the scene in a cloud of dust and accuse Paul of being a heretic and dismiss all his writings - the anti-Paulists - with some even denying the deity of Messiah (which Paul emphasises) with some less radical groups than they simply rejecting Hebrews because they believe that the Old Testament Temple will be restored, along with all the sacrifices, when Messiah returns...

And so the disagreements multiply. You get the general picture. I have only mentioned four or five factions but there are hundreds more permutations detailing what is, and what isn't, required. In reality there are over 34,000 denominations, each with slightly different interpretations of the Bible, and the number is growing all the time. Most of these will either hint or say outright that they have the most correct interpretation of the Bible comared to all the others, and will urge you to join them. Others have a more relaxed approach and accept the diversity so long as certain key doctrines are accepted, usually as represented in the 'classical creeds', co-called. Protestants, who adhere to the Sola Scripture - Scripture Alone - dogma are the most fragmented of them all. Something isn't obviously right, is it? How could it be when in that great High Priestly Prayer in John's Gospel that we made mention of last week, unity was the Saviour's great plea (Jn.17).

All of this is, naturally, ammunition for the sceptics and atheists for whom all of this is evidence that religion is just make-believe and Scripture is contradictory and full of errors. Yet Christians and Messianics continue down this road of chaos as though there was no tomorrow.

Are we - have we been - maybe asking ourselves the wrong questions about the Bible? If we were to ask questions in a different way, might all this chaos be mopped up and there be harmony? To argue, as fundamentalist Protestants do, that the reason Christians are so divided is because only some of them have the 'Holy Ghost' (by which, as we know, prophetic Scripture can alone be properly interpreted - 2 Pet.1:20) really does not solve our problem either because every group worth its salt will make the same claim! 'We have the Ruach (Spirit), you don't!' Indeed, this forms the basis of all sorts of conflicting claims to authority, from the legalists (like the Catholics and Mormons) to those who insist that all that matters is the spiritual fruit (Mt.7:20) - "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Gal.5:22-23, NIV). Admonitions to 'discernment' are also all well and good but the fact that there are 35,000+ different denominations does not really lend a very powerful testimony to such claims.

Consider for a moment the statistics. There are 2.5 billion people who call themselves 'Christian' worldwide which means on average there are about 71 million believers per denomination if you spread them out evenly. Of course, the distribution isn't even at all as most of these are to be found in a small percentage of the total. There are about 1.3 billion Catholics, 920 million Protestants and 270 million Eastern Orthodox. The Protestants contribute the most denominations, of which about 280 million are Pentecostal, 105 million are Baptist, 100 million are Calvinist, 90 million Lutheran, 85 million are Anglican, 80 million are Methodist, 20 million are Adventist, 16 million are Mormon and 8½ million are Jehovah's Witness, to give you a rough idea. Many of these have many sub-denominations.

If we are to make sense of the Scriptures and discover what true spiritual authority is, and how we are to properly use the Scriptures in the way they were designed to be used, then I think we need to first of all remind ourselves where we are. Last week I was at pains to point out to you that the reason our prayer life can be so tumultuous is that as believers we find ourselves at the turbulant intersection which is the Old Creation and the New one. It should not therefore come as any great surprise to us to discover that the Bible is viewed through such chaotic lenses too. There is a reason the Master said that all (not 'some') authority was given to Him as a Person and not to some stand-alone printed book because He alone is able to bring order out of chaos, clarity out of haziness, and illumination out of darkness. Only He is able to make the Scriptures speak with one voice.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves because there is a real danger of our over-simplifying and creating a different kind of chaos if we are not very careful. You're probably already figuring out that we are in very real danger of going round in circles, for in truth our saying that only Yah'shua (Jesus) can bring unity is like saying that the Ruach (Spirit) alone can interpret the Scriptures. Then the question becomes: who has the Ruach (Spirit), who has Messiah, and how can we know...in order to get an authoritative pronouncement? Because the bottom line then becomes that existentialist point called experience. Then it becomes your experience versus mine, and who's to say who's right? Is it even possible to know? Here we come to the limits of philosophy.

Clearly the Bible has always occupied, and must continue to occupy, a central place in the life of the Messianic Community (Church) if we're not to become totally subjective. But at the other extreme is the Sola Scriptura claim. You can try to be 'scientific' and 'logical' about your interpretation of the Bible, dealing squarely with the language, history and culture of the biblical world, but these involve a large number of complex disciplines of which we yet have an imperfect knowledge. Who has the perfect overview? Then the debate reduces to claims as to who has the most grey matter or the best oiled neurones.

Yah'shua (Jesus), to whom, as we have seen, has been given all authority by the Father, was profoundly shaped by the Scriptures. When the earliest Christians searched the Scriptures, which until the 4th Century consisted primarily of the Tanakh (Old Testament), they did so with one main goal in mind: to understand what the living Elohim (God) had accomplished through Yah'shua (Jesus) and to reorder their lives appropriately as His talmidim (disciples). By the 2nd century (100-200 AD) many of the early Christian writings were being gathered together and were themselves being treated with reverence and were being accorded a similar status to the Tanakh (Old Testament). By the end of the 2nd century some of the greatest Christian minds were making a study and exposition of the Scriptures, both old and new, a major part of their work in pursuing the mission of the Messianic Community (Church) and strengthening it against persecution from without and from controversy from within. Those earliest writers like Origen of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine would not, moreover, have viewed themselves as what we today call 'theologians' but first and foremost as Bible Teachers. The modern distinction which we make between the two would never have even occurred to them.

Last year I made a scriptural and historical study of the doctrine of universal reconciliation which caused an uproar amongst some of our friends and at least one of our own people because the conclusion, which is beyond any shadow of a doubt in my own mind (I shared my inner experience of this last week), is that the Messianic Community (Church) of the first half millennium overwhelmingly rejected the doctrines of eternal torment and annihilationism. Apart from Augustine's City of God, most believers haven't read anything earlier than either the Reformers of a mere 400 to 500 years ago (principally Luther and Calvin). Most studious believers don't read anything older than Spurgeon and even then most confine themselves to modern writers of the 20th or 21st centuries like Tozer or Ravenhill.

Now I personally want to know what the earliest believers had to say because they were closest to Messiah and the apostles, and the closer you are to source, the more authentic their teachings are likely to be, unmuddled by other (principally surrounding) influences. Like I said, though, it wasn't really until the 2nd century onwards that great minds started making a defence of the Besorah (Gospel) in works that have been preserved for us to study and enjoy.

Take, for example, Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote sublimely in Greek, and Tertullian, who wrote bombastically in Latin, both of whom were from the 2nd century. The main themes of Theophilus' Ad Autolycum are creation, history, the future resurrection and judgment with an emphasis on faith and revelation. Very straightforward. Tertullian, in contrast, sets forth in precise terms in his 5-volume Adversus Marcionem (a dangerous heretic) theological principles and exegetical methods which, though previously accepted, had not before been defined. Tertullian contains the earliest commentaries on the Gospels and the Pauline epistles, and is the earliest attempt in Latin to interpret the Tanakh (Old Testament) in terms of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament). The difference between the Greek and Latin mindsets is astounding.

Fast forward 400 years to the mid 9th century and our eyes alight on the commentaries of Isho'dad of Merv, Bishop of Hadatha in Assyria, regarded as the father of the Eastern Church, who wrote in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, so even though there are 800 years between Yah'shua (Jesus) and Isho'dad, the language and mindset was still largely the same as that spoken by the Saviour. All three men were scholars and highly knowledgeable in the Scriptures yet the 'flavours' of the three are very, very different, especially Isho'dad. The philosopher in me resonates with the gentle Theophilus, my classical Latin education and soldiering background makes it easy for me to connect with Tertullian, even though I find myself the most distant with Latin writers, but my spirit sings when I read Isho'dad! Yet I have benefited from all three.

Jerome's poorly translated Latin Vulgate Bible - and indeed the Latin language itself - dominated the West for a thousand years and shaped the Western and global Christian mind. The Reformers turned the Latin into German and English and we acquired new layers of meaning on top of the previous three:

• English / German (~500 years) - the Reformation, on top of
• Latin (~1,000 years) - Dark Ages/Catholicism, on top of
• Greek (~500 years) - Early Enlightened Church, on top of
• Hebrew / Aramaic (~1,500 years) - Prophets & Revelators

A language is much more than its vocabulary and grammar. It has its own history and spirit which consists of layers upon laters of symbols, expressions, sounds, gesticulations, intonations and inflections which are impossible to write down. I never learned Classical Greek, though I was offered it and unwisely refused it, not knowing how priceless it would have been to me later. I did, however, learn Latin (from the time I was about 6 until I was 16) so reading Tertullian or Cyprian in Latin enables me to connect to the 'spirit' of that language which is very imperial, orderly and lends itself well to mindset that thrives in law and administration.

English is full of Latin (and Greek). So when I did my gargantuan study on Universalism in 2018, I had little difficulty perceiving the difference between the Latin æternum (from which we get the English word 'eternity') and the Hebrew olam and Greek æonios which in our English Bibles we wrongly translate as 'eternal' too [3] when both indisputably refer to a fixed period of time except when referring to Elohim (God) Himself. The trouble is, Jerome, working alone, translated olam and æonios into æternum and for a thousand years the Latin (Roman) Church thought they meant 'eternal'...all because of one man (Jerome). Worse, when the Bible was first translated into English, it was often translated from the Latin and not the Hebrew or Greek.

Culture impinges on our language. It impinges on modern English just as it did anciently on Latin and Greek. There's even a difference between the late Hebrew of the centuries immediately before Messiah and the early Hebrew from Moses' day. Just one word, Torah, changed in meaning during that time-span. Indeed, to translate this Hebrew word as simply 'Law' is a grave error because by the time of Messiah and the apostles it also meant 'Teaching', 'Doctrine' and 'Instruction'. Thus when Protestants glibly insist Yah'shua (Jesus) 'did away with' the Torah or 'nailed it to the cross' (when what the Scriptures are actually saying is that He did away with or nailed the penalty of the Law to the cross), what they're actually saying is that He did away with doctrine, teaching and instruction too, which the rational mind knows to be ridiculous.

Understanding language is important, and translating it into another language like Latin or English is even more important. Swathes of denominations would vanish overnight were they true to decent translations. So why aren't they? For the same reasons that all human instuitions resist their own reformation or dissolution - people have vested interests and, perhaps even more importantly, there are invisible spiritual powers that want to keep human beings confused and in ignorance. Humans are tribal by nature too, and party or denominational loyalties keep them in thraldom. When denominations disappear is is not usually because their members dissolve them but because their members die out, as the Shakers did, and then only because they believed in celibacy. Their rate of mortality exceeded their rate of conversions which sealed their fate.

I am the first to admit that Messianic Evangelicals have traditionally 'done Scripture' more or less the 'Protestant' way. Since most of us began our spiritual lives as Protestants (from diverse denominations) that's hardly surprising. That has served us pretty well up till now only it has resulted in lots of 'shelved' questions that now demand to be answered. We cannot remain stuck in the controversies that have arisen since the 16th century. Indeed, we have insisted in our Mission statement from the beginning, that we believe not only in 'Reformation' but in 'Restoration' too. Yahweh is bringing back lots of doctrinal truths and practices that in some cases have been lost since the earliest times.

Whatever the Reformation was - and it was most certainly a necessary development at the time - it was basically a 'protest' movement (protest-ant) against corruption and abuses of a later, paganised form of the Gospel, namely Catholicism. Complete reformation was never possible. Martin Luther never intended to establish a Church in opposition to Rome but to change it from within. But the Papacy would have none of it and a disasterous bloody continental war in Europe was the result. Luther's reformation did not, in the end, go nearly far enough in uprooting Catholic errors and already we see the Catholic colossus going full-out to 'regain' its 'separated' brethren: Protestants have stopped protesting and are becoming Catholics again - Anglicans, Lutherans and even Charismatics! They have stopped defining themselves as anti-Catholics, never fully got themselves out of Catholic orbit, and are falling back down to Catholic 'earth' under the gravitational pull of its alma mater.

Like Joshua's conquest of the Promised Land, the Protestant Reformation was only partial and therefore retained the seeds of its own self-destruction. We can see, in particular, how its Torahlessness or lawlessness has led it into either complete anarchy (as we see in the charismatic movement) or into fossilisation (and in far too many cases), liberalism in the traditional denominations. My own alma mater, the Anglican Church, is becoming more liberal by the day, and is full of bishops who are agnostics or even atheists. But we can't just point the finger at the liberals for the 'fundamentalists' or 'conservatives' do not have a clean bill of health either, however much they may convince themselves that in maintaining a 'Scripture Alone!' battle line that they are immune to error themselves...which brings us back to the problem we began with. How can we all claim to believe in the same Bible and yet read it so very differently?

For there to be any kind of unity between believers of different denominations means that we must first of all admit that neither our shared canon of Scripture nor our claim to the inspiration of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) nor our common emunah (faith) in Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) has delivered us unity, whether doctrinal or otherwise. We can't keep on approaching the subject of the Scriptures in the same way and pretend that everything is working out alright. The truces between Cessationists and Continuationists, and between Calvinists and Arminians, for example, are an admission of failure to achieve the unity demanded by the Scriptures they profess to mutually agree to. Something has to change. But what? And how? Who are the most likely to work together with other believers and why? And why are some denominations hyper-exclusivist? Why can't they form common ground? Why do hyper-Calvinists believed Arminians are unsaved? I've had KJV-Only folk tell me to my face that I wasn't saved because I use different Bible versions and ultra-messianics tell me I wasn't saved because I don't pronounce the Names of Deity correctly (i.e. their way)! Surely unity over some or all of the six areas I am covering in this series of talks must be possible?

Let's at least today try to make a start in thrashing out the Scripture problem. I want to suggest to you today that what is commonly advanced as the 'authority of Scripture' by conservative Christians is better stated as Yahweh's authority exercised through Scripture and I'll tell you why now. But first we need to better understand the nature of divine toqef or authority.

Clearly, all authority is from Elohim (God), even in relation to governments:

"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which Elohim (God) has established. The authorities that exist have been established by Elohim (God)" (Rom.13:1, NIV)

Yah'shua (Jesus) said something similar to Paul in His words to the Roman Procurator, Pilate:

"You would have no power over Me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed Me over to you (Judas) is guilty of a greater sin" (John 19:11, NIV).

Both of these statements have to be viewed in the context of the greater reality with which they must align:

"Then Yah'shua (Jesus) came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me'" (Matt.28:18, NIV)

"Therefore Elohim (God) exalted Him to the highest place
and gave Him the Name that is above every name,
that at the name of Yah'shua (Jesus) every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is Yahweh (LORD),
to the glory of Elohim (God) the Father"
(Phil.2:9-11, NIV; cp. Is.30:62).

The same picture emerges in other sections of the Bible like Isaiah 40-55 and Revelation 4-5 (which I asked you to read last week). When John declared that "in the beginning was the Davar/Memra/Logos" he does not climax the statement with "and the word was written down" (Jn.1:1) but rather - and please note this carefully - "[and] the Davar/Memra/Logos (Word) became flesh and made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14, NIV).

The Letter to the Hebrews speaks glowingly of Elohim (God) speaking through the Scriptures in time past but insists that now, at last, He has spoken through His own Son. Since these are themselves 'scriptural' statements, that means that Scripture itself points - authoritatively, if indeed it does possess authority the way fundamentalist Christian Protestants say it does - away from itself and to the fact that final and true toqef (authority) belongs to Elohim (God) the Father Himself, currently (but only temporarily) delegated to Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) His Son for the particular æon or age [4]. Remember, it is Yah'shua (Jesus), according to John 8:39-40, who speaks the emet (truth) which He has heard from Elohim (God).

In other words, the 'authority of Scripture' is a little bit more complicated than it may at first seem, a reason why many of the debates on this subject are, in my view, so sterile. The concept which we call 'the authority of Scripture' is really a shorthand way of making a more complex statement, something well known in Christian theology, what is known as a 'portable story'. What, you might ask, is a 'portable story'? Well, a 'portable story' is a way of packing up a longer narrative about Elohim (God), Yah'shua (Jesus), the Messianic Community (Church) and the world, a bit like folding them up and putting them into a suitcase, so that we can the more easily carry it around with us. Words like the 'atonement' are a good example, a word you won't find bandied about much in the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament), if at all (depending which version you use), but which is a convenient shorthard way of saying that "Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve" (1 Cor.15:3-5, NIV) and "Elohim (God) so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eonian chayim (eternal life)" (John 3:16, NIV). It's a lot more convenient at times, you'll agree, to use one word like 'atonement' rather than unpack it with multiple statements like these.

That's what is meant by a 'portable story'. It's a kind of 'theological shorthand'. So these words are useful, like suitcases. They enable us to pick up lots of complicated things and carry them around altogether. However, we must never forget what a suitcase is for: things that have been packed away aren't supposed to remain packed, but must be unpacked and put to use in a new location. One thing I refuse to do is have theological 'debates' which amount to little more than Christians and Messianics hitting each other over the head with locked theological suitcases! It's important to unpack our shorthand doctrines and carefully inspect them and I realise that some people find this very tedious (I suspect that's mostly because they are mentally lazy) but, you know, things left packed away for too long can go moldy. Our centuries old theology, too long taken for granted, needs fresh air and a hot iron to press it out. Words like 'authority', 'Scripture', 'God', 'atonement', 'eternity', 'heaven', 'hell', 'salvation', 'faith', 'law', 'justification', 'grace', 'righteousness', 'Trinity', 'church', and so on. All of these are very densely packed terms, all of which need close inspection, something Messianic Evangelicals have not shyed away from doing, and continue to do, even if it upsets a lot of people who would rather their suitcases remained packed so they can swing them more easily at opponents. An unfolded shirt is much harder to weaponise than a suitcase.

They say that culture is what you do and believe long after you have forgotten why you do it and believe it. Our use of theological terms follows in much the same sort of way. People say they believe in this or that but quite often they have no idea why because they've never bothered to unpack the theology to see what it actually says, let alone what it implies for their living. That's what Bible teachers are for, or ought to be, and this unpacking should be done in every congregation and in every home. Every father and mother has that responsibility. How can children otherwise arrive at intelligent conclusions and know what they do or don't believe in? How can they ever otherwise come to know the character of Elohim (God)? All I want is to know Elohim (God) and lead other people to know Him too. And knowing is, of course, also doing. I can't do that if I have no idea what important words in Scripture actually meant to the people they were originally written to. Never mind what Luther, Zwingli or Calvin thought they meant, or this Catholic Pope or that Eastern Orthodox Patriarch thought, or what modern preachers like Francis Chan, John MacArthur, or Derek Prince think, even if I freely confess I am historically curious to know what they arrived at the conclusions, however right or wrong. I want to know what Yah'shua (Jesus) meant by 'repent' or Paul meant by 'grace' or John meant by 'heaven', and whether our English words actually mean the same as the original words they purport to translate from the original Aramaic or Greek.

So when we take the phrase 'the authority of Scripture' out of its Protestant suitcase, and start unpacking it carefully, then we are forced - if we are honest - to recognise and accept that it can have Christian meaning only if we are referring to Scripture's authority in two senses, which is really one sense but with the second more fully unpacked than the first:

• 1. In a delegated (representative) or mediated (linked) sense from that which Yahweh Himself possesses; and
• 2. In a delegated (representative) or mediated (linked) sense from that which Yah'shua (Jesus) possesses as risen Master (Lord) and as Son of Elohim (God).

In other words, to the Christian or Messianic, Scripture can have no meaning and no authority except it be understood and accepted within the context of Yah'shua (Jesus) as DDR' - as the Resurrected Saviour who is the Son of Elohim (God). If He wasn't Elohim (God), if He didn't die on the cross and make an atonement for our sins, and if He did not rise from the dead, then the Scriptures are without authority and might as well be placed in the British Museum or Smithsonian Institute. They're no more or less valuable than the Quran, Upanishads, or any other religious book that contain instruction on morality. Everything then boils down to, 'Who is Yah'shua (Jesus)?' and 'What is our relationship to Him?'

Once believers are courageous enough to do and say all of that, then they - we, all of us - can start asking the much more interesting and difficult questions, 'What is the toqef or authority of Elohim (God), or of Yah'shua (Jesus)?', since He has it all. 'What rôle does Scripture have within that central truth?' 'Where does the Ruach (Spirit) come into the picture?' And, most importantly of all, 'How does this 'authority' actually work itself out into my 3-dimensional space?' 'How does it relate, if at all, to the 'authority' of leaders or office-bearers within the home and within the messianic community (church)?' Remember, please, that those who wrote down the Scriptures in the first place were flesh-and-blood home- and and community-leaders who occupied places of authority assigned to them by the Creator, as confirmed by Scripture itself. And that's something that those still struggling with feminism resist strongly because it offends their flesh.

People sometimes have this mistaken idea that the Scriptures were lowered in something like a metaphorical basket out of Heaven to Moses and others, in sections of course, without any kind of human input. These sections or parts, they assume, were then somehow 'stitched together' later by a committee of those given letters of authorisation from Heaven to do so, people, it is assumed, filled with the Ruach (Spirit), and that they therefore possess an extraordinary 'authority' all on their own. This is the simplistic fairy tale kind of picture, or something like it, that most devout believers like to imagine, because it makes them feel comfortable and safe. Those a little matuerer will have slightly more sophisticated versions of this idea.

I was brought up on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible which was pretty much the only English translation of the Bible widely available in the anglophone world between 1611 and around 1885 when the Revised Version (RV) came out. It shaped our language, our literature and our culture because it was the standard for 300+ years. There was a certain mystique about it, an assumed perfection and therefore authority, that in our day became so exaggerated, unrealistic and idolatrous that in the end it acquired a virtually cult-like status, and for some criticising its translation became virtually heretical. Just read a Jack Chick comic and you'll understand what I mean.

The KJV came to also be known as the "Authorised King James Version". This very fallible Stuart monarch, James I, had as his agenda the promotion and preservation of the 'Divine Right of Kings' against criticism and the establishment if his Church - the State or 'Established' Anglican Church - to back his claims up. And wonderful a translation though the KJV was, and is, it was not remotely perfect and urgently needed revising to bring it into alignment with the best available ancient manuscripts and scholarship by the turn of the 20th century.

You all know about the modern King James Version-Only (KJVO) cult - because I mentioned it to you earlier - some adherents of which condemned me as 'unsaved' because I used other 'impure' versions in my ministry. A kinder but still confused friend and KJVO minister generously conceeded that I was 'potentially saved'. (I managed to get him out of that cult, praise Yah!) One of the earliest in-depth studies I made in which I had to do a lot of historical 'unpacking' was into the false claims of these people who claimed an exclusive 'authority' for a particular 17th century English translation, an authority w which did not exist, an authority even supposedly greater than the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that it was translated from! Even the KJV translators claimed no such authority and recommended that we use many translations in our Bible studies. At least those venerable men had their heads screwed on properly.

The KJV-Only controvesy is a perfect example of wrongly claimed and misapplied authority. I don't hesitate to call it a cult because it is crazy, just like the modern flat-earth cult which has seized the minds of uninformed, gullible people who have lost their intellectual foundations. I want us to be very careful that we never claim an authority we don't in reality possess, however much we might like to possess such, and so find ourselves wandering into a cultic spirit. It's all too easy which is why I bring this subject up so often. So, if all authority belongs to Christ, as He insisted, how much has He delegated to us? What are the limits? And how are we to approach the authority of Scripture?

The 'King James Version-Only' people make fantastic, yet predictably absurd, claims, but then so do the defenders of a lot of religions who make similar claims for their holy books (like Islam's Quran) but it remains a fairy tale. Their prophet never went on a night flight by flying donkey to Jerusalem, except possibly in a dream. Do I believe the Bible is inspired? Absolutely. Do I believe that other religious books like the Quran and the Upanishads or the Talmud are inspired in the same sense too? No, I don't...just to get that out of the way before disreputable persons try to misquote me, as I know they will, and accuse me of being a New Ager or eccumenical. That doesn't mean that I don't believe there are inspired parts in some of these other books, inevitably. All I am saying is that the Bible was inspired through human agents, that it contains their personalities and, to a certain extent, their world views, and that we have to look at its authority in ways that are perhaps unfamiliar to most fundamentalist Protestants who want a fairy godmother to simplify life for them by waving a magic wand over it, so they can weaponise it for evangelism and substitute it for Christ Himself instead of using it for its intended purpose as a spiritual direction finder pointing us to the Divine Source of all authority, emet (truth) and chayim (life).

OK, what is the Bible, then? First of all, it is not a 'list of rules' even though it contains many mitzvot (commandments) of various sorts and in various contexts. And some of these contexts (like animal sacrifices) are no longer applicable because Messiah fulfilled their originally intended purpose as pointers to His sacrificial death. Nor is the Bible a 'compendium of true doctrines' even though it contains lots of true doctrines about Elohim (God), creation, man, the world, Yah'shua (Jesus), and so on. As anyone will tell you who has tried to compile lists of commandments or arrange a system of doctrine from the Bible this is a very difficult thing to do and that is one reason there are so many interpretations of the Bible and and so many thousands of denominations. There is a greater biblical purpose - take care of that and the commandments and doctrines will take care of themselves, aligning themselves seamlessly.

If Yahweh did not give us a carefully ordered theological manual of the kind the Romans mindset would have approved of, what did He give us? In a word, He gave us a STORY - not a piece of fiction, not a yarn - but a factual, historical narrative - a grand epic - told in prose and poetry, with anecdotes, tantalising allusions, romance, humour, and so forth. Indeed, we have to ask the question, did Yahweh even give us a text originally?

That question, I'm afraid, will have to wait until next week to be answered as we are well and truly out of time today. We have done some unpacking of the theological suitcase. Next week we will lay it all out and see what the Scriptures actually are and how we are not only to use them but become a living part of them! Until then, may Yahweh bless your week and may you pursue your New Creation in Christ with vigour! Amen.

Endnotes

[1] See, for example, James R.White, Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible's Accuracy, Authority, and Authenticity (Bethany House, Minneapolis: 2004), for a discussion of the Reformed Protestant position.
[2] N.T.Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (Harper-Collins: 2013), p.x
[3] See our website on Æonian Time
[4] Notice both the clear universalism and the subjection of the Son to the Father: "20 But Messiah (Christ) has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all [people] die, so in Christ all [people] will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Messiah (Christ), the bikkurim (firstfruits); then, when He comes, those who belong to Him. 24 Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to Elohim (God) the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For He must reign until he has put all His enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he 'has put everything under his feet.' Now when it says that 'everything' has been put under Him, it is clear that this does not include Elohim (God [the father]) Himself, who put everything under Messiah (Christ). 28 When He has done this, then the Son Himself will be made subject to Him who put everything under Him, so that Elohim (God) may be all in all" (1 Cor.15:20-28, NIV).

Acknowledgements

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (SPCK, London: 2007), 'Reshaping the Church for Mission', pp.245-303
[2] N.T.Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (SPCK, London: 2011)

Comments from Readers

[1] "Thank you!" (JB, USA, 28 March 2019)