Welcome to the Boundless Bible. My name is David Shapiro. Hey, I'm Javi Marquez. And I'm Jason Holloway. Welcome to the Boundless Bible. I'm David. Again, this week we don't have Javier Jason, but I'm excited because I went around and I had some of our listeners ask some questions that they were thinking about that they wanted to ask for our show and haven't had a chance to. So I'm just going to start to answer some of those questions. Again, it's not going to be a comprehensive answer. This is just going to be my point of view, but I'm just going to shoot into some of these questions you guys had. So the first question: were the books of the Bible chosen and how were they chosen? Well, it's very interesting because a lot of people think that there was this council that happened that picked the books that were going to be in the Bible. And this comes from different areas, movies, things like that. But the truth of the matter is, if we break it into the Old Testament and New Testament, first is if we look at the Old Testament, there are some clues as to how we know which of those books are truly there and why they're there. And, you know, one of the things I always go to is Jesus and the apostles themselves. And they go and they mention a lot of these books when they're in the New Testament. And for me, I'm going, if if Jesus mentioned it, it's probably going to be true. But even more than that is you have the Pharisees, and the Pharisees disagreed with Jesus on just about anything. But you never heard them say, hey, wait a minute, that's not a book that I believe in my Bible. That's not the one that I follow in the Old Testament. So just so you understand, you know, when you start looking at the Old Testament, these are a lot of things that were confirmed already. This was already believed by the Jewish people that this existed. These were the word of God. This wasn't something that was up for debate. There were no councils that debated this. These were things that were known. When it comes to the New Testament, though, again, you have these people that say, well, you know, there was this council that happened in 300 AD that decided on these. And that's just not true. What we actually start to see is about 30 to 50 years after the death of Jesus, you start to see that some of these documents are actually showing up hundreds of miles away. The most important one, we have the Gospel of John, and this is P52, Papyrus 52, and this has been dated to around 100 AD. So you're talking about only about 30 years or so after it might have been written. So that this isn't a lot of time where hundreds of years afterwards this was something that came out. This came out right away. And then when you start looking at between 100 and 200 AD, you start to see the entire document showing up. So it's really interesting because when we look at some other documents out there, you know, when you look at the Iliad or uh if you look at Plato's works, you know, these sometimes don't show up for several hundred, if not a thousand years later. And it's it's something where when anybody talks about why we have the Bible, why we don't have certain books in there, there's a huge study in it, the apocryphal books. And one of the things I always want people to remember is having a book that has truth in it doesn't make it scripture. So you have great books that have a lot of history in it. If you look at the Maccabees, these are part of the apocryphal books. These are books that the the Hebrews did not even accept into their own scripture, but it does have some history in there. So it's a great read. Just don't mistake it for God's word. That's really important. So when I start looking at it, again, this is just a really brief overview, but I'm really confident that we have the Bible that we're supposed to have. And then when you really look at it, I mean, for 2,000 years now, God has preserved his word, at least 2,000 years from the New Testament. When the Old Testament, you have even further, God has preserved his root his word over the time. And I think through that it also shows that we have his word. Second question we have is how do we know that the Bible wasn't changed over time? Now, this is really interesting because you have the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that's something I'm actually going to talk about later with a different question. We start talking about, you know, the scribal laws and what these Jewish scribes did when they were writing down the scriptures, when they were copying it from scripture to scripture, if they were off by one word, they would rip up and destroy the document. They ended up counting words afterwards. They didn't just copy it, then they would count it. This was a really delicate, and this was something they took very seriously. Like I said, they could be working on a document for months at a time, and if they got one thing wrong, they would destroy it. This is something where, again, if you start looking at some of the old documents, also some of these ancient documents that are written, they weren't taking as much care as with the Bible. Somehow, because people use the word Bible, all of a sudden they start to complain and say, hey, this had to been changed, this was different. And it's just not the case. We start to see with tremendous accuracy the different Bibles that we have, whether we found it a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago, we start to see that there's really a, you know, uh there's a similarity between them that's just uncanny. They're almost identical in words, and anything that changes has nothing to do with the central themes of the Bible. Uh, they could be a word here or there, but it really doesn't change anything from the belief of Jesus. So I just want you to understand that what we have today is absolutely what they had 2,000 years ago. Uh, and it's really amazing that God preserved it that way. Another question we have is if God is sovereign, do we really have free will? And I want to just address this for a second because both things could happen at the same time. So, yes, God is sovereign, he is control over everything. When we're born, we're created from God. We are born with a reverence of God. I see this in some of the older communities that have happened, some of the ancient communities, you know, they didn't really have atheism. They believed in multiple gods, they believed in gods, but everyone was born with this sort of reverence for a higher power. Uh, having atheism and having this belief that there was nothing there is is more of a recent, you know, modern day phenomenon. Back then, you would believe in the Greek gods, or you would believe in the Egyptian gods, or you would believe in Yahweh. Uh, and this is really important because what we start to see is I think we're born with this reverence from God. That's that's what he gave us in our birth, but we have the free will to choose what to do with that. And the free will of love, you know, we we can choose to love God back and to accept him, accept his gift that he gave us. And that's really where, you know, when somebody says to me, hey, you know, if God is sovereign and there's free will, how what they're really saying is, listen, if God is all powerful, why do things happen that we don't expect them to happen or that are bad or evil? And the truth is that yes, God is all-powerful, but in his all-powerful knowledge and wisdom, he also gave us the free will. He doesn't want a robot to love you. Uh, he doesn't want a robot to love him. He doesn't want, you know, I'm married and I don't want my wife to be a robot forced to love me. Uh, it only means something when she chooses to love me. And I think with his wisdom, that's what he did is we get the choice to love each other, to love him. Um, and he gives us a choice and he loves us as well. And I just think it's it's a beautiful thing to have the free will. Uh, I would not replace it with his sovereign power over me, even though he has it. Remember, he created everything, so he has a sovereign power, but in that wisdom, he gave us free will to love throughout our life. Uh, another question we have is was it what is the significance of Jesus dying on the Passover? This is a really interesting thing because Jesus could have chosen any time period, any day of the week, any month to sacrifice, you know, for for his love for us. And he chose Passover, and I think there's a couple of reasons for it. One is during Passover, there's a tremendous pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This would have meant that there would have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews in Jerusalem. And what that means to me is he wasn't hiding anything, he wasn't trying to, you know, have his life, you know, given to us for free when nobody was around. He was doing it when millions of people could have attested to it, which is even more amazing. He did it while there was a lot of people in a pilgrimage in Israel. Um, so that right off the bat is amazing. But then when you look at Passover, when you look at what happened at the first Passover at Exodus, this is when the blood of the lamb, uh, you had to have a spotless lamb not break its bones. And when you kill it, you smear the blood over your doorpost. And that was to show the finger of God to pass over your house so that way you would be safe from the last plague. And then while that was happening, the Jewish people were eating unleavened bread and they were eating the the roasted lamb, the rest of the lamb. It's it's really symbolic to what happened with Jesus. Jesus, who is the spotless lamb, he is the perfect lamb. If you look at the way he was killed and when he was crucified, he was pierced, he was not, no bones were broken, uh, which is really interesting. It actually says that. So he is the perfect lamb who's was spotless, bones were not broken, and his blood, instead of just covering the doorposts, covers all of us. Then the night right before his crucifixion, when he had this Passover dinner with his uh apostles, again, breaking the bread and and eating in in honor of him. Um, you know, this is in remembrance of again that time when they were eating the lamb and remembering the blood that covers. And I just think it's really beautiful. So it's not on, it's not an accident that, you know, it was chosen for Passover to have this holiday and to have Jesus, that's a time at which he had his crucifixion. It really was God's plan and it's really beautiful. Um, and I definitely suggest you look into other holidays. There are so many holidays in in God's calendar that just really show how beautiful God's narration is of life. Uh, another question we had was do I prefer Hebrew or Greek for a translation? It's really interesting because when you look at Hebrew, uh, we've talked about this before on the show. These are verbs. This is an action. This is I am doing something, not just it's not a philosophical thought, it's doing. And then when you look at Greek, this is now becomes poetic and philosoph philosophical. And uh when you put them both together, I really kind of think of our show, and you have somebody like Jason who really looks at the symbology of the different words in the Bible, and then you have somebody like Javi who's looking at the literal translation, and even me, I look at both of those sides, but you look at us and we go, that that really is the Hebrew and the Greek version. You have the action and the beautiful faith-filled words, and then you also have the symbolic and philosophical journey as well through the Bible. So for me, you know, it's not one prefer over the other. Obviously, born and raised Jewish, I have more familiarity with Hebrew, uh, but they I think they both work really beautifully together in the Bible to explain this book that, you know, some people can learn it really well by their head, others can learn it really well by the heart. I think when you put them both together, that's what you're getting with the Hebrew and the Greek. We have another question. What is the most impactful biblical archaeological find? This to me is uh definitely one I told you I'd come back to. It's the Dead Sea Scrolls. Uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 uh in Qumran. What's really cool, if you think about it, is this was found not by archaeologists. This was found by a shepherd boy who was just looking for his lost sheep. I just think it's amazing. It's such a beautiful way to find it, as if God did this on purpose and he sent this shepherd out to find what I believe is the most incredible biblical archaeological find ever. And what it does is you're seeing, you know, I believe it's 500 different manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments that are collected together that you get to see. And this is some people think this might have been an area where they were teaching people how to become scribes, and you have governmental letters and you have policies, and you also have about 40% of biblical literature in there as well. And one of the greatest finds is the great Isaiah scroll, and they they have this dated between 125 and 100 BC. Uh, this means this happened before Jesus. And when you look at the prophecy of the great Isaiah scroll, when you look at the prophecy uh of Isaiah, you know, where uh Jesus is going to be or the Messiah is going to be pierced for our transgressions, this is the prophecy that came true through Jesus. And this prophecy is showing that it happened prior to him even being here. So it's not like it was written afterwards and somebody is is filling in what he already did. No, this was written beforehand. We have proof of it. It's absolutely amazing. It also shows when we were talking earlier about how do we know the words that we have today are the same we had before. I mean, this is it. This is now we get to see copies before they found this. The oldest copies were about a thousand years from there, a thousand years more modern. So now this brings us back to BC. It gives us an idea as to what the Bible said the Old Testament had, the Tanakh at that point, um, was, and the words are exactly the same that we have today. Um, with I believe it's like a 98 or 99 percent accuracy. That's amazing. And that's how I say, you know, the Bible is not changed, but it's also the reason why I think we have the greatest discovery biblically ever. I have two more great questions, and and I'll wrap up. What happened, since I love archaeology, somebody asked, what happened to the Ark of the Covenant? So, first, what is the Ark of the Covenant? This was a box overlaid with gold that God said to make that held inside of it the tablets from the commandments, Aaron's staff, and a jar of manna. And this was supposed to be the throne place of God when he was tabernacling, when he was camping with the Israelites. And, you know, everybody over the period of you know thousands of years have been looking for the Ark of the Covenant and where did it go? If somebody had stolen it, we haven't found it from that place. Uh it's just gone. We have found so many different artifacts, but this one seems to be gone. And I have two theories. One is we haven't done enough digging yet to find it. So it's always possible that we can find it in the future. And if we do, man, I would be so excited. But my other theory is a little bit more faith-filled, and what that is, is that God took it away. We didn't need it anymore. We no longer need to tabernacle with God in a tent. There's no longer the throne place that he needs to dwell with us because he dwells in us. That was the whole purpose of Jesus leaving, is he said, I'm gonna leave a spirit. He's gonna leave the Holy Spirit with us, who is gonna be within all of us. So there's no need to tabernacle in a temple or in a tent. There's no reason for the Ark of the Covenant. What happened is God removed that because what's happening right now is God's spirit is inside each and every believer. And I really believe that because of that, we didn't need the Ark of the Covenant anymore. The last question is what Hebrew word holds the deepest meaning to me that a translation just doesn't do it justice? And I'll tell you that's chesed. Is a word that they just don't have a uh a true translation in English, but what it is, this faithful, loyal, covenantial love. It encompasses all these different words of faith and love and loyalty and faithfulness and covenant and truth and integrity. I mean, just all of it combined into one word. If you can think about what that ultimate word would be, um, that would be it. So chesed and and this is uh you know, I want to get this right. It occurs 240 times in the old testament, but my favorite is in Psalm 136, for his hand, I'm sorry, for his chesed endures forever, for his love endures forever. And it's so beautiful to me, to me to have that word meaning his covenantal love, his his belief in us, his love in us, his trust in us, and our trust in him and belief in him, that chesed will be there forever. Um, and anybody who who's out there questioning whether or not God truly loves them or whether they they accepted Christ and am I still saved, you know. Hey, I just sinned and am I still saved? This chesed, this is him being faithful through the covenant, even when we're not. That's the meaning of that word as well. So even when we're falling, he stays secure. Even when we're sinning, he's gonna stay faithful. And that's such a beautiful thing. It's such a beautiful love to know that God has us no matter what. So I really think you know, ending with that word chesed is probably my favorite way to end this episode. I know these have been really, really quick. I know I ran through some stuff really quickly. I really miss my co-hosts, and I can't wait to do this with them. What I would love is if you can go like and share this podcast, but more importantly, comment on it. Ask your questions. I would love to do another episode like this with my two other co-hosts. I think it'd be really exciting to see what their points of view are on some of these questions you guys have. Thanks so much and have a blessed week. Bye.