Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Tim Mackie 0:00
I really do think there is something unified, in particular about the collection that also is called the Protestant Old Testament, but Jesus called it the Torah, the prophets and the Psalms. So I actually think that collection is actually tight. It's been woven together. That's a particular part of the forest that has-that's all connected in a really important way and respect the integrity of that. However, that part of the forest gave birth to a whole bunch of other stuff that will help us to understand that core part of the forest really well. And so, yeah, I mean, it wasn't until post Gutenberg, so the printing press, and then some Protestants, because of the Protestant-Catholic debates that were beginning to get really fierce in the late 1500s and early 1600s. It wasn't until the early 1600s that you had Bibles being created without the deuterocanon or the Apocrypha, so just like let that register. For three quarters of church history Christians have been exposed to the core part of the Old Testament and the literature the grew up around it.
Seth Price 1:39
At the beginning of last year, on the honest discussions Facebook group, I had asked some people, Hey, what would you want me to talk about? What are some questions that you have? What are some things about the Bible that just don't make sense to you?
The canon of Scripture came up a lot over and over and via text messages and with some close friends just the canon like why These books. Why are my books different? What does this matter? Was this just some thing that got put together accidentally, haphazardly? Was tied to Empire? Like, why these books? And what do these books have to say to you and I? I'm Seth, you're listening to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, and today I spoke with Dr. Tim Mackie. If you are not familiar with Tim Mackie, you'll hear me reference online a lot, but also in just in person, like, I like The Bible project. They have a reading app, they have all these YouTube videos. But what they do have as well is the Bible broken into bite sized pieces in a way that I can understand them, and in a way that my children can understand them. And that's a big thing to hit both sides.
One of my favorite things about Tim is (that) he just has a humility and a patience of answering questions from people like myself. So here we are, Tim and I talking about why the Bible is the way that it is. Why it's these books? Why aren't there other books? And if there are, what does that look like? When we talk about the Bible what is the narrative pushing us towards? So here we go a conversation about the Bible with Tim Mackie. Unknown
Seth Price 3:47
Tim Mackie, I'm excited that you're here excited to see your face big fan. And after all these months of planning, I'm glad that we're finally able to get you on and when I say we, I mean me. We'll use the queenly we but welcome to the show, man.
Tim Mackie 4:02
Yeah, thank you, Seth, it’s good to talk with you.
Seth Price 4:04
I always take a few minutes at the beginning of each episode, just in case anyone is unfamiliar with you. And so the other day, I actually put it on Facebook. I was like, Hey, I'll be talking to Tim Mackie on this. Does anybody have any questions, but I had a lot of people say, I don't know who that is? To which I said Google it and they were like, yes. I don't know who that is. In a nutshell, what would you say it is? That is you like what makes Tim…Tim and then kind of what do you do, where you coming from?
Tim Mackie 4:30
Yeah, um, let's see. Okay. Um, I live in Portland, Oregon. And I am a professor of seminary here in Portland. called Western Seminary. I teach Biblical Studies. And I've been serving as a pastor mostly in teaching, and teaching theology and adult education at churches for the last decade or so. Let's see and then about five years ago, a friend and I started a nonprofit animation studio making short explainer videos about Biblical theology, themes in the Bible, books of the Bible. And that's gained a lot of momentum. It's called the Bible project. And we're YouTube educational channel. That's like where we live on the interweb. And, so yeah, we release short animated videos that are not for kids, though kids do enjoy them. But they're really aimed at adults trying to demystify the main themes and the books of the Bible and where it came from and how it works and so on. So that's what I'm doing full time now is working with The Bible Project.
Seth Price 5:44
Do you miss teaching, although I would argue, I watch a lot of those videos, that it is teaching but it's a different type of…there’s less interaction, unless you want to go into the comments which it's the internet so you don't want to do that. Do you miss that portion?
Tim Mackie 5:59
Well, Still do quite a bit of teaching. I'm still on like part time at Western. But I just do one class a year. And actually one of the projects we're doing with The Bible Project now, we're still a pilot project it'll release in early 2020 is going to be classes. So actually we have such a large support base now that I'm just teaching the classes that I would teach at Western seminary, but teaching them at The Bible Project for small groups of our supporters. And then we're filming those and then we're gonna start releasing free grad graduate level Bible classes on our website. Which I'm thrilled about that is actually my favorite in environment.
Seth Price 6:43
Well, I'm also thrilled about that. Yeah, the video of yours and then I'll get to what I really wanted to have you on about the video of yours that I referenced people to the most often is and it's recent. I think it's from this season. I say season because isn't this, it was September of last year, when you… October
Tim Mackie 7:00
That’s right we are in our fifth season of videos.
Seth Price 7:02
You know, I'm not making it up because I actually know the dates. You, did like the Trinity, and you're trying to explain like dimensions and how you can only see different portions at one time. And I'm badly explaining this. And so I'll put it in the show notes, because it's an eight minute video that I struggle to explain. That's one of my favorites, because the topic is the topic is dense. The animation is good. And the content is good.
Tim Mackie 7:28
That's great. I'm glad. Yeah, we have added yet another inadequate analogy to the history of people trying to explain God's identity. (laughter) Just a helpful inadequate analogy that helped me take a step further.
Seth Price 7:43
It's helpful though, because most analogies I can't explain without saying, you know, picture this and this and this and then this, it's at least a physical analogy. So I can I could break it down. Even if I have props on a bed with a sheet for my kids. You know, it's an analogy that actually can touch. So at least for me, I remember.
Tim Mackie 8:05
What you are referring to is imagine you're a two dimensional person and a three dimensional object appeared to you, it would seem impossible. Then we say, perhaps God is a, like a multi dimensional type of reality and us poor little 3d creatures it just breaks our categories. Anyway, I'm just trying to summarize for your listeners.
Seth Price 8:27
Well, I will link to it. But also just picture you and I are three dimensional and we're reading the book Flat Stanley with your kids. And if you don't have kids, and you do one day we will just make it theology and…
Tim Mackie 8:36
I love Flat Stanley!
Seth Price 8:37
I wanted to talk to you about the canon because I get questions and emails often about people of when will you talk about “this” and so on my list we were talking a minute ago. Yeah, sure. Like I I do want to talk about the Solas specifically and rip them apart, and just other portions of the Bible. But a big portion, and a lot of understanding that has come to me, is the Bible that I have isn't necessarily the same Bible that you might have on that bookshelf behind you, or the Bible, that Catholic Church down the street may have, like the Bibles are different. And so when we talk about that we're talking about the canon. And that in itself needs a definition of what the Canon is. And so I thought I would start with an easy question of when I say the Bible.
Tim Mackie 9:27
Yeah.
Seth Price 9:28
What am I saying? Like, what does that even mean?
Tim Mackie 9:29
Yes. Well, it turns out that the answer to that question is not simple. (laughter)
And just that, that simple fact, is worth just letting it register. Yeah, when people say the Bible, that's shorthand for a whole bunch of things that need to be said really quickly. (laughter)
So first, let's just start with I go to the bookstore, you know, and I encounter a Bible what that means for a modern person saying that is I see a whole bunch of thin, usually really like low quality onion paper, thin pages bound between like plastic, cheap leather or something like that. And it has Holy Bible written on it. So I'm making fun of the poor quality of most Bibles. So that technology, which is called a Codex, which is like two covers with the back binding and a bunch of individual pages, you know, stitched or glued together. That's a really old technology. But the Bible is actually older than that technology.
So that's called the Codex form, man that came into prominence in the 1st through 3rd centuries after Jesus. The Bible, at least three quarters of the Bible, that the Christians called the Old Testament, is way older than that. And before that form it didn't ever exist all in one bound form it existed on scrolls, individual scrolls that could not fit everything. It was a collection of scrolls. So even by using the singular noun, “the Bible”, that's actually not ever what Jesus or the Apostles called their Bible. They called it the Scriptures, The Writings, or Jesus will refer to as a three part collection. We call it the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms, or later in Jewish tradition called the Torah and prophets and writings.
So that's the first like leap we have to do is to say that the Scriptures were a collection of literature that was considered by devout Jews, before Jesus, to be the product of a human and divine partnership. And what's fascinating and what's gonna throw all of us for a loop is that Jewish communities, before Jesus, didn't seem to—because you didn't have to come binding it—they didn't have a lot of debates or hang ups about what exact books were “in” and what books might be related but not necessarily apart and what books are definitely not apart but really cool and that you should read them, because they're all in individual scrolls. And so there's a blurriness to the boundaries of this collection that's very ancient. And that resulted in different Christians, once the Jesus movement launches, you have different groups with different views about what should be in the collection.
And that's why you go to the bookstore today, and you'll see a Bible that has 66 books, or you'll go and you'll see what's called a Catholic Bible, they'll have something called the Apocrypha or the Deuterocanon and that'll have some more literature.
So let me just pause. So that sounds terrifying to people who have grown up in Protestant tradition. And I understand that, my Christian faith has all been nurtured in that tradition too, and I'm proudly a Protestant. But it's a historical fact that we have to recognize that the Bible has taken multiple shapes in different communities throughout its history. And we need to honor I actually think we need to honor that fact.
Seth Price 13:23
What do you mean honor?
Tim Mackie 13:26
I think it tells us something beautiful, about how God has chosen to work in history. But there's nothing to be scared of here. That's my point. We need to honor it and let incorporate that fact into our view of what what the Bible is how it came into existence, because that was kind of a longish. Maybe that’s too long answer, but it opens up many cans of worms that I'm happy to maybe pull some of them out. I have many worms.
Seth Price 13:55
Something that I latched on to there, you said that you know in a more ancient context, there wasn't this…what's the right word? There wasn't as much nuance around “No, this book is ‘in’ and this book is not ‘in’, this book isn't ‘in’, this book is ‘not’.” And you said they didn't argue as much about it as what we would. So why was their lack of importance? Was it I don't know how to read? Like, what is it?
Tim Mackie 14:17
It has to do with what these texts are about, and how and why they came into existence in the first place. So maybe one metaphor would help. I think many of us come, and I'm just right now I'm just talking about first three quarters, the Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament; that's all I'm talking about right now. Many of us think about that these books came into existence in a similar way that if like you went to like a garden nursery, and you go out to like the outdoor part of the nursery, and you go to like the tree section. And, you know, they're all like, potted. They're in these big plastic pots. Some of them are small. Some of them are big Maybe they they're a little older, but they're all self contained and independent. And they are scooched together in like groups, you know, here's the Poplars and here's the Pine.
And so many of us think about the books of the Bible, and again, it's because the way we encounter them…here was where Exodus begins, “oh, there's like a blank white page between that and Genesis. Well, that must be a separate book. Now I'm in a different book”. And right, or I'm in the book of Joel, and we call them books, which makes us think of different author they have different some of them have different names. And so we think they have in independent origins and existence and so on. Just like those trees, all are independent and not connected to each other.
However, if you pay really close attention to what the books themselves, within the Bible, tell us about how they came into existence they give us a very different story. And then when you pay attention into the manuscript history, of these texts, they give us a different story. They give us a story that's much more like you go out backpacking. And you go maybe to Colorado, and you go into a grove of Aspen trees. And Aspen trees are awesome, because a whole forest can grow up of dozens 100, a 1000 trees, and they're all connected as one organism. They're all genetically connected. And some of them are taller, some of them are bigger. Some of them have branches going, you know, they look different above the surface, but they're all deeply interconnected. And they all begin from the same root. And, that is much more of the process of how this literature came into existence.
So, just think of steps here. Stuff happened. There's this family connected to Abraham, and crazy stuff happened to them, you know, just crazy stuff happened. And they have an encounter with the God who reveals himself as YHWH (YAHWEH). I mean, just read the stories that are in the Bible. Abraham is on the scene somewhere in the 17 1800s BC, I mean, the alphabet is just being invented at that point in history, you know, like, nobody knows how to read and write, except paid Egyptian scribes who can spend their lives learning hieroglyphics and stuff like that. So the alphabet is just being invented. So we have a long period of the family of Abraham where their history is being preserved orally, through oral traditions, which is still true in many cultures today. And so for generations, that's how these events, and memories, are being preserved about their family.
Moses, it's not till you get to Moses, that you get the first mentioned of the writing of the Bible in the Bible, and it's where he's at Mount Sinai. And it is where God appears in the smoke and fire and 10 commandments and God makes a covenant. That's the first time in writing that God is mentioned in the Bible, which I think is fascinating. So then, so it all revolves around Moses. And then for Moses, he's, you know, a part of this family. So you have to imagine he's inheriting all of this oral history. He's committing to writing many of the things that are in what we call the first five books of the Bible, but he's not writing all of it. He certainly didn't write the last chapter of Deuteronomy, because it says “and no one knows where Moses is buried to this today.”
Seth Price 18:39
Yeah. Including including me, Moses!
Tim Mackie 18:44
Yeah!
So, clearly, even the books where Moses appears, were shaped by people after Moses. The last chapter tells you that and so this is what I mean in terms of the forest. So if you go into Aspen forest, the tallest trees in the stand are the Moses trees. And they're connected to the first five books of the Bible. And then for Moses, Moses’ whole thing was "Man, these people don't really want to follow the God who rescued them out of Egypt". He wants to bless all of the nations through them. They are not very good at following him”.
And so what you have throughout Israel's history is a minority of leaders who are faithful to the God who rescued them out of slavery in Egypt. Most Israelites want to be Canaanites and Babylonians and follow other gods and so on. And so the whole complex history of Israel, you have a minority view, a minority report, of prophets, of priests, of some Kings, who want to follow the God of Abraham. And that's where the Bible comes from. It's from this minority group within ancient Israel. And they come to be called The Prophets and they are both shaping this family history and it's also coming into existence, and new books are being added and written, but it's all happening in this minority group within ancient Israel. And so you get to like the famous stories of Elijah, or the prophet Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, I mean, people hate these guys. Nobody wants to listen to them! And they're the ones who are protecting and cherishing these traditions in these texts throughout history, this small group of prophets.
And so, something really important happened when Israel went into the exile in Babylon. Babylon came to Jerusalem (and) took thousands of Israelites as slaves in Babylon. And something happened there were the final like forest, there was a burn in the Aspen forest, and it burned all the trees at the same time. And then they all started regrowing from that root. And then when they're regrowing, they're totally interconnected. And so this is why the collection that we call the Old Testament is like reading Wikipedia pages that are all hyperlinked to each other. They're constantly quoting and interconnected and they're actually growing and coming into their shape that we know them as at the same time.
Seth Price 21:13
Yeah.
That leads me to a question that someone had asked. So he specifically talks about the Babylonian exile. And so what he said was, he's like, do we know if there was a Jewish canon before the Babylonian exile? And then how do we know what the Hebrew Bible consisted of, you know, during the years of exile to the Septuagint?
Tim Mackie 21:32
Yeah, yeah, we have no idea. (laughter) What we have is what we can read about in the Hebrew Bible. And this is tricky, because even saying the Jewish Bible the story the Old Testaments telling us is that most Israelites for most of their history could have cared less about the Bible. They could have cared less about the tradition of Moses and following God of Abraham
Seth Price 21:59
Would be the case for the New Testament Christians following you know “the way” of Christ with with those early early, you know, the church fathers would they also have, quote unquote, you know, cared less about the Bible. Because the reason I asked that is, I often get told the, you know, this this Bible is I don't hold him to an inerrant view, at least not the way that most people mean the word “literally” inerrant. There's just too much, going back through the, from what, from the minimal amount of research that I'm able to understand that I do. You know, there there are parts where people will, you know, change things and add things and stuff that were in the margins on this manuscript that now get moved over into the Bible on this manuscript, and then we take it from there. So did the early Christians have that same, I guess, lack of not lack of regard but lack of sterility?
Tim Mackie 22:51
Well, let's pause. Let's pause on the New Testament for the moment.
Seth Price 22:54
How dare you. (in jest)
Tim Mackie 22:56
For me, it's helpful to really keep things separate in the pre-Jesus phase of the story. But what we can say is that however the Bible comes into existence, it comes into existence over a long period of time, with lots of people involved. Not just the main characters that are named in story, but a whole crew of unnamed scribes and prophets that claim that God is using them to produce these texts so that what these texts are communicating is what God wants his people to hear. Now you can reject or accept that claim, but that is the claim that this literature makes about itself. And I'm inclined to accept that claim, because I'm a follower of Jesus. And that's what Jesus thought about the Hebrew Scriptures.
So at some point in the late post exilic period we're talking like the 300-200 AD, you've got the base collection that Jesus is referring to call the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, and it corresponds to the Protestant Old Testament. However, what Jewish scholars and scribes continued to do was to read and reflect and to produce new texts. And there's a whole body of literature that's wonderful and fascinating. It's called Second Temple Jewish literature, sometimes called the Apocrypha and Psuedopigrapha. And what these texts are doing is it's like it's those remix phase. Every single one of them are producing remixes of the Scriptures, for a new audience and for a new day. And they do it in very creative ways. So you'll get a book like Judith, which is in the Catholic deuterocanon and Judith is the prophetess, Deborah, and David, and Elijah, and Daniel, all mixed into one character. And she overcomes by prayer and a clever plan she overcomes bad guys who represent Babylon and Assyria and Persian all in one character.
In other words, Judith is a work of Biblical theology. It shows us an ancient Jewish reader of the Bible, who's bringing together the themes of the Bible by creating a brand new text. And that's what I mean about the blurry boundaries. The books in the Catholic deuterocanon, there's nothing Catholic about them. They're just ancient Jewish literature that was inspired by the Bible. So this is going back to what I mean; ancient Jews didn't have the hang ups that we do about a book like Judith...is it in the collection is out of the collection. It's awesome. It's what it is.
And all it is is a remix of stories that are in the primary collection, namely, what Protestants called the Old Testament. So that's what I mean, I think the forest metaphor is helpful is to say there is a real center of the forest. It's what Protestants called the Old Testament. But that forest gave birth to lots of other texts that are close, really close, in time to the final formation of the Old Testament. And we don't need to make a decision is it part of the collection, is it not? It's inspired by it, and it can give us insight into the Core Collection. And to me, what really opened my eyes to this was Jesus and the Apostles are familiar, not just with what we call the Old Testament, but they're familiar with the whole forest. And they actually, the Apostles and Jesus, will quote from and allude and borrow language from the literature and the whole forest, not just in the Old Testament.
And once I realized that I was like, “Oh, I'm asking the wrong set of questions when I'm saying is something ‘in’ is something ‘out’ at a certain stage.” At a later stage is it ‘in’ or is it ‘out’ becomes important for the New Testament? It's a little bit different. But for the Old Testament, the Aspen forest metaphor has been really helpful for me.
Seth Price 27:11
Then building off of that to the New Testament. Which I know, I feel like I know more about the New Testament, but probably because growing up in a Protestant based church, we only we only talk about mostly Paul, and then every once in a while something else and then back to Paul, and then something gets in the back of Paul.
Yeah, one of the favorite books that I read last year is by Robbie Williamson out of Arkansas, he wrote a book The Forgotten Books of the Bible, and it's Song of Songs and Esther and Ecclesiastes. Like the books that we just don't talk about, because we just don't preach on these. And so don't forget, yeah, these books have purpose, and they have meaning and they have reasons to be here. And they're instructive, specifically Ecclesiastes, like the way he ripped it apart. But I've rabbit trailed. So how then did we get to where we're at now, where if it's not the 66, like, how do we get to pick and choose. And I guess more specifically, who gets to vote? Who is at CBS, you know, running the survivor show of the canon of you're voted off the island, you're not voted on the island. And another question specifically is, is there any matriarchal voice in that?
Tim Mackie 28:22
Oh interesting.
Seth Price 28:23
Which was a question that repeatedly came to me. Is this all from a voice of a male or does that? Is that even a good question? Or is there any Is there any female voice involved in that, that has maybe been suppressed? Or is it just “No”, not that there was no female voice? How does all those voices combined? And kind of how were they weighed and measured for their qualifications? And then what is the “Nope, you are black balled off the island? Get out of this Bible.”
Tim Mackie 28:41
So I know you said we're gonna move on to the New Testament, but I'm not. I'm going to go back for a second. (laughter)
So when it comes to the Hebrew Scriptures for me, the reason that I read those texts, isn't because I just find ancient Hebrew literature interesting, although now I do but most people don’t. The reason I read that is because I follow Jesus. And Jesus explained who he was in the light of the story that those texts are telling.
I mean, he actually made it so clear that if you don't understand these texts, you don't understand him or anything he's saying. What he says is often so cryptic, it's like, watching the third Lord of the Rings movie, without even knowing that movies one and two exists. It's just like, it's absurd. And that's it's very, very similar. So when I look at the patterns of how Jesus and his followers that he deputized, called the Apostles, when I look at what they're reading and what they appeal to the most, what they appeal to are the books that are in what's called the Protestant Old Testament. They never quote from the other Jewish texts in the same way they'll borrow language about phrases, but they don't quote from in the in way that “this is what the Scriptures say” that kind of thing. So to me that's significant.
I want to read the whole forest of literature, but I care about these specific texts, is what Jesus means when it talks about the Torah and the prophets. Okay.
So Jesus comes onto the scene, and more crazy stuff happens, right? Just like with Abraham, and so on. So, Jesus does what he does, he makes a claim that the whole storyline of God and Israel, as its interpreted in the Scriptures is coming to fulfillment in him through his death and his resurrection. However, Jesus is just one guy in one place. And so what he does, even just a year or so into the kingdom of God movement, is that he starts, he appoints or deputized his circle of close followers, disciples, that he's training and they're following him everywhere. They're memorizing his teachings, he gives them the same spiritual power and authority that he has. And so we call these the 12 or the you know, the disciples that come to be called the Apostles.
So there's an important move there for the origins of the New Testament, what we call the New Testament is that Jesus deputized a circle, a small circle, but a circle of people to represent him to represent his teachings, to go be his voice, and presence, in a place where he couldn't go. That's why he would send them out on trips, and then they would come back to him. And you can read this, Matthew 10, and so on.
So, in a way, what's happening there is the key seed being planted for what we call the New Testament. It's the circle of (the) closest followers of Jesus, who are authorized by him, and empowered by him to represent him to groups that Jesus Himself wouldn't ever go to. And so once Jesus is executed, and then he's seen alive again, what we have in the four accounts in the New Testament of the Gospels are different ways that different moments, especially in Matthew, Luke, and John, where we have memories preserved of how Jesus commissioned these people to go now represent him out to Israel, to the nation's, and so on. And so in a way, the New Testament is just an outworking of that commission.
So the 27 books that are in our current New Testament are the oldest Christian literature. They're the oldest. And they're the books that claim both most within themselves, and people debate about circumstantial evidence around them, but nobody debates that they're the oldest texts. There are lots of other early Christian texts, and some of them were really popular. And some of them people tried to make arguments for like this should be in the core collection of Christian literature. But what we have in these 27 texts…and here is what we have well, there's another question!!…but to me that that was a helpful concept when I was introduced to it just let to let that register. Jesus commission, a group of people to represent him. What these texts are the earliest Christian texts that stem back from that circle of people that he commissioned to represent him.
Seth Price 33:20
Where were you about to go?
Tim Mackie 33:23
Oh, where I was about to go was to say that all of the and I should put a footnote I have a lot more reading on, homework to do on, New Testament canon formation. But everything I've worked on up to this point, what later councils have like old men in white beards, you know, who are, you know, having debates and hired by Constantine and so on. None of these Councils, as I understand them, are deciding what's in the contents of the Bible. What they're doing is surveying “what are people reading”? What is the universal church practicing in its weekly worship? What are the texts that have risen to the top?
And what rises to the top are our 27, and then there's a handful of others that are really popular too. And so that's where the Shepherd of Hermas, what is called First Clement, it was a really important bishops. I mean, this is pretty small list actually.
But the debates aren't like, okay, they're not like the nursery, the garden nursery. Okay, we got a whole bunch of trees now which ones should we put in? My wonder, you know, well, I vote for this one. It was a groundswell. It was like YouTube. It was like the viral books are the ones that came from the earliest part of the movement and what those later councils are debating isn't what's ‘in’ and what's ‘out’; it's how do we bring together the church around this core collection of literature. And it was messy. I mean, this took many councils over many, many decades and a century or two, so I'm not trying to make it sound more tidy than it actually was.
But those two concepts are helpful for me. Jesus commissioned a group. These texts are the earliest ones that come from that group. And it took the church quite a while. It took the text a long time to spread also, you know? I mean, they didn't have the internet, they had the Roman roads, which were pretty darn awesome. But it might take many decades for the Gospel of Mark to make it to North Africa and to Greece and out to Asia or India. Stuff took a while, and so not everybody had the 27 books that we have, all in one place in those first centuries. They likely had a growing collection.
Seth Price 36:30
Because the name of the show is Can I Say This At Church, this might sound like an off-putting question, but it's genuinely the one that pops in my mind. So I hear you saying, you know, these people are talking about what is deeply impacting them, and that's honestly, I think this is why it would get so messy like if I have this book that is deeply helping me connect and hear God and, you know, do things that are fruitful. And then you want to tell me, you know, this other person that…no! There's not enough other people reading that it's obviously you're just too tertiary for us to include it in the core teachings. So that would get deeply personal the same way that the fact that the Cowboys can't win a playoff game that also gets deeper personal for me. I'm tired of the Patriots obviously. They're the viral, they're the cannon of the NFL for lack of a metaphor.
Tim Mackie 37:14
Yeah. So that's right. And and low grade stuff can rise to the top.
Seth Price 37:21
Yeah. Nobody wants to Browns in the Canon. Yeah, except for the browns, go dog pack, or whatever they call themselves.
So is there a case to revisit that? Not that I necessarily want to, because these texts, I'll say, so one of my favorite versions of the Bible that I have is Bibliotheca. And I don't know if you've read that version of the Bible. Have you?
Tim Mackie 37:44
Yeah, the nice hand bound one, single column.
Seth Price 37:50
Yeah. But what I like is A: all the other texts that aren't in the normal Bible are there but B: they're not necessarily in the same order either. And so I see things differently, and then C: they I don't really they know when I start and stop. So someone we were talking about at the beginning, you know, if you just flip a page, there's blank space, and we've moved on. And so when I read the text that way, more narrative, yeah, I guess that's the best way to say it. It changes the text. And so is there a case to say, we should look at doing this again?
Like we should reevaluate and intentionally teach these other tests that we haven't taught in a while and see where the churches or is that an unfair question?
Tim Mackie 38:29
Well, there's two questions. One is how do we respond to this particular; so again, I came to faith in the Protestant tradition. So I really do think there is something unified, and particular about the collection that also is called the Protestant Old Testament, but Jesus called it the Torah, the Prophets, and the Psalms. So I actually think that collection is actually tight. It's been woven together,
Seth Price 39:04
Leave it alone.
Tim Mackie 39:05
Well not leave it alone; but just, that's a particular part of the forest that's all connected in a really important way and respect the integrity of that. However, that part of the forest gave birth to a whole bunch of other stuff that will help us to understand that core part of the forest really well. And so, yeah, I mean, it wasn't until post Gutenberg, so the printing press, and then some Protestants, because of the Protestant Catholic debates that were beginning to get really fierce in the late 1500s and early 1600s. It wasn't until the early 1600s, that you had Bibles being created without the deuterocanon or the Apocrypha. So just like let that register. For three quarters of church history, Christians have I've been exposed to the core part of the Old Testament, and the literature that grew up around it.
Seth Price 40:06
That just makes me cynical, like why? (laughter both)
Tim Mackie 40:09
Well, I think it should just say like, this is the way history works. Yeah. And if we want to recover the whole literary tradition that the Old Testament gave birth to, um, we should, you should read this literature called the Apocrypha, because it's fascinating. It's really fascinating. And it enriches your reading of the Old Testament.
Jesus grew up knowing this literature. And the Apostles, including Paul, show that they have knowledge of this literature to, there's nothing threatening here. It's more that we need to just reframe our categories. When it comes to the New Testament. I do think the viral YouTube analogy does break down though because really bad videos can rise at the top.
Seth Price 41:00
Fair enough.
Tim Mackie 41:00
I mean, I think there's a handful of factors that work one is widespread popular. Another is the fact that these books were connected to that inner circle of Jesus, which is almost certainly why it was that they spread. You know, in Paul's letters, it's pretty obvious, you know, he writes his, his name at the beginning of them. The gospels are technically anonymous, like nowhere in the gospels do you get “Hey, I'm Matthew, here I am!”, but the traditions about them being connected to Matthew and John. Mark and Luke, were not a part of that 12 circle, but they were a part of this second generation who worked with the first crew, you know, and people debate those traditions, but I think there's good reason to take them at face value. So for me, again, just like there's a core to the Hebrew Scriptures. But I want to honor it, but also recognize that gave birth to a lot more. There's a core collection that is what we call the New Testament and that also gave birth to a circle of early Christian literature around it. That is really fascinating and important. And I don't personally treat it and engage it on the same level that I do, and with the same expectations, but I do think that I need to be familiar with it. Because most Christians, for most of church history, we're reading the whole forest, not just the core collections. So I'm not saying there isn't a core. I'm just saying the division between the core forest and the other trees that grew out of it was a lot less important for most of earlier generations of church history.
Seth Price 42:51
Yeah. And so I'll stretch your forest metaphor a little bit further because I've been thinking about it in the back of my brain. I live at the edge of the Shenandoah National Forest and then the other edge is the George Washington National Forest like right where the two intersect here in Appalachia. And so I know as you hike into the forest, it grows more and more and more dense. And more and more quiet, I guess is a good word. But I think quiet is a good way to think about meditating on Scripture. But as you enter, there's civilization there and things that don't necessarily push against you. And the closer that you get to the core there's more brambles; there's more overgrowth, there's there's just more there, it's just more dense.
I'm going to steal it. I'm going to take it, I'm gonna make it mine. You can do the same, it doesn't matter.
I have two more questions. One is is probably going to go over some people's heads and so I'm sorry, but it's it's a question that someone asked me and I like it and so I'm gonna make it here. So the one guy asked why the Protestants and Catholics most typically use translations of the Old Testament based on the Masoretic text, other than, and they use Roman numerals here the LXX, which I believe is the Septuagint correct, in worship Bible study and exegetical work? Like why do we lean towards I guess the Masoretic text as opposed to the Septuagint text?
Tim Mackie 44:13
Yeah, yeah.
So what that question means is for the Old Testament, these texts were all written in Hebrew, about 200-ish years before Jesus, Jewish scholars down in Egypt began realizing like, oh, man, everybody's speaking Greek. We have Jewish kids who like don't even know Hebrew anymore when they grow up. So they produced, over the course of about a century, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. That became really popular and widespread, because as you get closer to the time of Jesus, everybody's speaking Greek. And so when the Jesus movement started, it was from the beginning a bi and trilingual movement and community. People spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and Latin as well so quadlingual. And it was multinational, you know, pretty much from just about 50 days after people saw Jesus alive from the dead at Pentecost.
So what happened was that translation became widely popular in the early Jesus movement. In fact, it became the main way the followers of Jesus encountered the Bible, in the Greek in Greek speaking world. About 300 years after Jesus, that Greek translation was translated into Latin. And then that Latin translation was then corrected by somebody who knew Hebrew, a guy named Jerome, and that's called the Vulgate. And then that Latin Bible became the Bible of Western Christianity for a millennium.
Seth Price 45:58
Okay, I hope Jerome knew what he was doing.
Tim Mackie 46:00
Totally!
So the question is, why shouldn't just the Greek and Latin Bible be the Bible of Christianity? Well, here's what's interesting is when you look at Jesus and the Apostles, they were familiar with the Greek rendering of the Bible, they often use it in their quotations. But it's also very clear, that at the core, they knew it in the Hebrew. And this is a Protestant thing. And it actually has to do with concepts of inspiration. And I actually resonate with it to a certain degree.
I'm a follower of Jesus, and who he is is mediated to me by the Apostles and his earliest followers. And Jesus knew his Bible in Hebrew. He knew his Bible in Hebrew! That's the Bible that he was raised on. That's the Bible that he had memorized. That's the Bible that he prayed, you know, every night, and that's the Bible that, I think, where he discovered his identity and discovered who he was as he was growing up, and understood his vocation, and what it was called to do.
So if that's the case, I think there is a special, privileged, place of the original language of these texts that were so important to Jesus. And historically, that's where Protestants have landed is that the original language is going to get us closest to the meaning that the these authors wanted to communicate. And it's important to know the whole history though.
I ended up doing my dissertation on the Greek and Hebrew versions of the book of Ezekiel. Comprehensively mapping out all their differences. Dude, it's so interesting!
Seth Price 47:50
How many are there?
Time Mackie 47:52
Well, it depends on…I focused in on where there's an additional word or a missing word or phrase and there is in the ballpark of 400, it's not a small number. But what those differences are doing is so awesome. And tells us so much about the final shaping of the Aspen forest that is the Hebrew Bible. But that's for another day. (laughter)
So there you go. That's what that question is calling the Hebrew Bible, which is what that question is calling them as Radek Tex has been privileged. And I think there's a good case to be made for saying if I want to understand an author on their terms, I should probably read in the language that they wrote. That's what Jesus knew the Bible in. That's what I'm going to go to. But we should also honor the fact, just like we should honor the bigger Aspen forest, we should honor the fact that most Christians for most of church history have known the Bible in the Greek or Latin translation. And so we should understand what developments and changes happened in those translations, too. And there you go.
Seth Price 48:55
Yeah. So the final question just because I like to end on Jesus more often than not, and I usually don't, sometimes I don't. Actually lately Tim, I've always asked the question because of some of the topics of conversation like, is there hope that the church for my kids is even a healthy place to be? And that's a paraphrase of the question. And I don't want to necessarily ask you that, although you can answer it if you want…
Tim Mackie 49:18
Yeah.
Seth Price 49:19
…but it's disheartening to find so many people go, “I don't know. But whatever the church is, it looks probably very little like church does today”, which is scary. And not why we're here. But so when we talk about the metaphor of an Aspen forest, and then I hear you often, you know, in your videos, and you've got other podcasts that you've been on, and Exploring My Strange Bible is one of my favorite podcasts specifically, because I do it when I do housework.
Tim Mackie 49:42
(laughter) Yeah, sure. That's when I do by podcast listening too.
Seth Price 49:46
Yeah, I literally listened to there was like an entire series. I think you were talking about Jonah, and Nineveh and then breaking it apart. And then what did you say I'm a badly paraphrase, but I'm out there painting and staining and you're like “It wasn't that Nineveh ‘here's’ like this as far as you can go in the known Earth”. And so he's not escaping to some arbitrary place like I want to leave the planet! And he won't let me leave!
And go, I didn't know this! I didn't know this!
(laughter from Tim)
So what is that Aspen forest, and so we'll call that Scripture, what is that pointing to? Which I know you argue, and I would agree, is Jesus. But how is that forest at the root level interwoven where if we could look underground, we're looking at it and be like, “Oh, I see. I see this. This is Jesus, and it's always been Jesus”.
Tim Mackie 50:34
Yeah, well, you know, the first three quarters of the Christian Bible doesn't belong only to Christians, right? It's the Hebrew Bible. And it's actually also the Scriptures in two other religious traditions. The one that came to existence in Judaism, and then after Christianity in Islam, too, they have an important place for the Hebrew scriptures in their Bible literature. So, that's just important to recognize.
So anytime a religious community says “this is what the Hebrew Scriptures are about”, you're making a controversial claim. Because there are multiple communities that claim that it means different things.
Seth Price 51:16
Am I misquoting you? I feel like I’m not.
Tim Mackie 51:17
No, no, you're not. Okay. I'm just I'm just saying we need to in the modern world, we need to be honest with that fact. Okay. However, I think that Jesus was right. Namely, these texts, and I'm referring to the Hebrew Bible, Jews call it to not Old Testament, Torah, prophets and writings. The way that these texts are designed, is as a composite unity. So it is the diverse collection of literature from the whole history of Israel's history. But as those circles of prophets from Moses all the way for over a millennium were shaping, editing, compiling, adding new, crafting, they engaged in a series of literary conventions to unify the whole collection around a core set of themes. And lo and behold, those core themes are introduced in the first 10 pages of the first scroll, what we call Genesis 1-11.
In Genesis 1-11, the whole storyline is anticipated; even its resolution is anticipated in seed form. And it has to do with humanity appointed as the image bearers of the Creator, creatures in whom Heaven and Earth meets, God and humanity meet together, and God appoints them to rule and steward over the creation but to trust his wisdom about good and bad. The humans don't want to trust wisdom about good and bad they want to take it for themselves. And then the story It just goes downhill really quick in terms of violence and self destruction. And the exaltation of human made empires, exalting our definitions of good and bad to divine status, and then we began killing each other over our different definitions of good and bad. This is what Babylon is in the Bible.
However, on page three, in Genesis 3, when God informs the humans of the consequences of their bad decisions, he says “that a seed is going to come”, which in Hebrew can be a plant, or a child, a seed is going to come who's going to reverse the self destruction of humanity and is going to reverse and overcome the power of evil that humans have given into. And it's a little poem in Genesis 3:15 that says, the seed of the woman is going to destroy evil at its source while being bitten and destroyed by it.
And in that little two line poem, Genesis 3:15, the entire storyline of the Bible is both anticipated and its resolution is pointed to. And basically the rest of the Hebrew Bible is just replaying, kind of like Star Wars, you watch movies in the Star Wars universe and you're kind of like, I've been here before, but the characters are different. It's never identical. There's three different Death Stars. But it's never the same.
Seth Price 54:29
This time it is a planet. Spoiler alert it is a planet.
Tim Mackie 54:33
This is how this is how most of the classics and Western literature work is patterned story worlds that repeat generation after generation both repeats, but also intensifies the things of the past. And the whole Hebrew Bible is working in that direction.
And so the four Gospel accounts of Jesus have been designed precisely to plug right in to the narrative that the Hebrew Scriptures are developing and presenting Jesus as the one who overcomes evil by letting evil overcome him and overcoming it with his life and with his love.
And so that's what I mean, the unifying center I think of the whole Bible is Jesus. And well, actually, I should say, this way, post Jesus, I can say that pre Jesus, I think Jews were sitting around reading these Bibles saying, I'm waiting for the snake crusher to come who is going to crush evil. We're waiting for the new Moses. We're waiting for a new David, we're waiting for the prophet who is to come, we're waiting for the Messiah. And the gospels are saying, Yeah, Jesus, he is that one that the Hebrew Scriptures were pointing to.
So for me, that's how the whole collection makes sense, that's what it's about. And that's why I read it is because it helps me understand Jesus. I've learned to read other ancient texts and appreciate them, and Egyptian and Ugaritic and Canaanite text, I mean, it's cool stuff, man. But like, at the end of the day, really I just want to follow Jesus. I want to follow him with more passion and love people the way that he did, and know his love that can change me. And that's why I read these texts, because they have a unique power to introduce people to Jesus that can change their lives and change whole communities. And these texts have been doing that for thousands of years. And it's why we're still talking about them on the other side of the planet, 2000 years later.
So, all of the historical debates aside, the Bible isn't just something you learn about and put in your pocket. It's mediating a real person to us that is waiting for us to respond, not just to debate about and if we haven't done that personal response, then it's like ah why read it‽
Seth Price 57:04
Point people in the right spot Tim, where do they go to? Where do we send people?
Tim Mackie 57:09
The Bible, you just Google The Bible project, where our website is theBibleProject.com. And there you go, that's where you'll find everything. If you're interested in taking your Bible learning to the next level, the videos can be a helpful place to do that. But once you get into the website, we have actually whole web pages about every book of the Bible, with other videos and resources, recommended reading and stuff. So it's really kind of a whole Bible resource website.
Seth Price 57:37
Absolutely. So the links to those will be wherever you read the things, people. But Tim, thank you for making the time to come on. I'm glad we can get happen. I would love in seven or eight more months, we'll start planning it now, and we'll maybe do it again. Talk about other parts of the forest but genuinely I appreciate the work that you do. And I really appreciate you making the time to come on.
Tim Mackie 57:58
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Happy to talk about it.
Seth Price 58:38
Every conversation that I do, I'm always sad when it ends, but there's genuinely so many things that I didn't get to ask him that I wanted to and so maybe another time. But I learned so much from that and I really like the metaphor of a forest and you know the Torah, in the central core beliefs, that Jesus would have known and everyone else would have known as the middle of the forest, the densest part of the forest, the oldest part of the forest, the most rooted part of the forest when we're talking about Scripture. I never really thought about it that way. And I do like the analogy.
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Goodbye, my friends.