Then of course, in the New Testament, Jesus is referred to as Yeshuah, which is how His name would’ve been pronounced by his mother and his family and everyone who knew Him when He was walking upon the earth. And so, now that we’re in the New Testament, let’s talk about second Timothy for second, because we see something really fascinating in today’s reading, that’s kind of mind blowing because we never think about it. So, this New Testament, that begins with the gospel of Matthew and ends with the book of Revelation, these writings weren’t just dropped out of the sky in a, in a bound gilded book that said New Testament on the front of it. And you know, the apostles didn’t just find this left in the upper room in a corner somewhere and…and realize oh well, here’s what we need to believe and here’s what we need to do, right. So, like Timothy, for example, he…he couldn’t of gotten the first letter that Paul sent him known as first Timothy and read and thought, you know what, I need to cross reference that with second Timothy, to see if it corresponds, because he hadn’t gotten the second letter from Paul yet, the one that we’re reading now. So, he didn’t have it to base any doctrine or have any encouragement or any reminders of things that he needed to pay attention to. Right, Paul’s didn’t sit down and write all of his letters, all at one time, all from one place and then distribute them around so that they all landed at the same time. And even if he had done that, you know like, if he wrote a letter at the same time to the Galatians as he did to the Ephesians and he sent them out, well, the church at Galatia doesn’t know what the letter to the Ephesians says, and vice versa. So, it’s not all part of the New Testament at this point. And the 27 books of the New Testament that we have as the New Testament, although that had kinda been settled and these were the books that had been used, this wasn’t like affirmed by the church at large until like, the late fourth…fourth century and there were other things being written and other things being said along the way. And you know, that’s where this term Gnosticism comes in. But not everything was Gnostic, some things were just newer. Some things just had incongruencies and most scholars would agree. You know, like the books and letters that we have in the New Testament, these are the oldest writings. So, there’s this period that is centuries. So like if Jesus died in…in the 30s, and I don’t mean like the 1830s or 1730s. I mean, like the 0030, like the 30s, then there is this period of development where God begins to reveal the New Testament through His people. And like in the case of Paul’s letters, they’re written one at a time, to different people, in different places, for different reasons, but even Paul suggests, you know, to share these things, pass them around. And so, that’s what began to happen, the letters began to be copied and passed around. So, if you’re in Ephesus and you have letters from Paul that were written to the Ephesians, the church at Ephesus, well than you may eventually get a copy of letters written to the Galatians, and you may share copies and then copies of letters from Philippi come in. And these letters begin to be shared around and they begin to be read in the churches and then be used for instruction and doctrine in the churches. And they become very, very valuable, irreplaceable to the common life of faith that these churches share. But there was a point in this story were nothing was written yet. So, if we were to consider the Book of Acts, which was penned by Luke, by the author of the Gospel of Luke. So, Luke and Acts are this two-volume set and Acts begins to show us all of the things that happened in the development of the church. These things all had to happen before they could be written down, before an accounting of those happenings could be written down.
Daily Readings and Commentary from the Daily Audio Bible