There Must Be Something More

104 | Pray

"The Apocrypha and the Septuagint," Trey said. Then he chuckled. "I know, pretty hard to pronounce."

The crowd chuckled along. Then all stopped when they realized they were actually enjoying the lecture.

"Pray," Meredith said to both me and Alex. "We have to back up the lecture with prayer. The spiritual realm's at war. The enemy is moving, too. But we can all counterfeit this with prayer. Pray there will be no distractions, no pre-conceived ideas about the Lord and His truth, and no spirit of misunderstanding and spirit behind spiritual blindness."

I nodded in agreement. Alex looked confused.

"What?" She asked.

"Pray that all may go well tonight," Meredith told her. "The Lord's moving. He really is. Usually people would fall asleep in history class, but this time they're actually paying attention. But you know when the Lord is moving, the enemy's gonna try to ruin it."

"Got it," Alex snapped. We all tried to look casual, but in our minds we were praying up a storm.

"I'll text the others to pray, too," Meredith said. "We must engage in spiritual warfare. Warfare intercession."

"There is a cluster of about 14 books, known as the Apocrypha, which were written some time between the close of the Old Testament (after 400 B.C.) and the beginning of the New." Trey began. "They were never considered as part of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Jews themselves clearly ruled them out by the confession that there was, throughout that period, no voice of the prophets in the land. They looked forward to a day when "a faithful prophet" should appear."

"The Old Testament had been translated into Greek during the third century B.C., and this translation is known as the Septuagint, a word meaning 70, after the supposedly 70 men involved in the translation. It was the Greek Septuagint that the disciples of Jesus frequently used since Greek was the common language of the day."

"Wow," Alex mumbled.

"Whether or not the Septuagint also contained the Apocrypha is impossible to say for certain, since although the earliest copies of the Septuagint available today do include the Apocrypha—placed at the end—these are dated in the fifth century and therefore cannot be relied upon to tell us what was common half a millennium earlier.

"Significantly, neither Jesus nor any of the apostles ever quoted from the Apocrypha, even though they were obviously using the Greek Septuagint. Josephus was familiar with the Septuagint and made use of it, but he never considered the Apocrypha part of the Scriptures."

I stood up and made an exit discreetly towards the men's bathroom. When I got there, I saw Calum fixing his hair. He turned to me stony-faced.

"Trey really studied his Scriptures," he commented.

I scowled. "What do you want, Calum? I thought you didn't want anything to do with my faith. Why are you in the crowd listening to this?"

"Got a problem with that, Borlock?" He smirked. "Afraid I'm going to disprove that lame religion of yours?"

"Like you can," I scoffed. "I've seen your grades in History. Even my dog could do better than you."

"You really left me and Amanda, did you?" He said. His eyes were sad now. "All because you got brainwashed by that Religious Girl."

"What do you mean left you and Amanda? You left me. I wanted to tell you the amazing things God has been doing in my life. I wanted you to experience what I experienced. But you said I wasn't the same person anymore. And you lost your best friend."

"Because we did!" He yelled. He stormed towards me and yanked my collar. "I want my best friend back."

"You still have him. But he's changed. He's better. And he wants you to know why." I said.

"He's dead," Calum said. My heart fell to the pit of my stomach. I couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. But it was true, anyway. The old has gone, the new has come. And I would hate it if the old Charlie were to be back. No way. I was done with my old, sinful nature.

Calum let go of me, shoving me to the tiled wall. He shook his head and walked out the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

When I came out of the bathroom, I saw Amanda by the entrance. She was still listening to Trey, but from afar. As I walked towards the entrance to the lobby, she turned and saw me. I wanted to wave "Hi" and still let her know I wasn't planning on ditching them, but she quickly looked away, her eyes back to the speaker. I awkwardly hurried to my seat beside Meredith.

"Where were you?" Meredith asked.

"Just talked to an old friend."

"The Dead Sea Scrolls," Trey said. The slide behind him changed and the words 'The Dead Sea Scrolls' flashed clearly.

"The collection of scrolls that has become available since the discovery of the first texts in 1947 near Wadi Qumran, close by the Dead Sea, does not provide scholars with a definitive list of Old Testament books, but even if it did, it would not necessarily tell us what mainstream orthodox Judaism believed. After all, the Samaritans used only their own version of the Pentateuch, but they did not represent mainstream Judaism.

"What can be said for certain, however, is that all Old Testament books are represented among the Qumran collection with the exception of Esther, and they are quoted frequently as Scripture. Nothing else, certainly not the Apocrypha, is given the same status.

"In spite of suggestions by critical scholars to the contrary, there is no evidence, not even from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that there were other books contending for a place within the Old Testament canon.

"For the Jews, therefore, Scripture as a revelation from God through the prophets ended around 450 B.C. with the close of the book of Malachi. This was the Bible of Jesus and His disciples, and it was precisely the same in content as our Old Testament.

"The New Testament scholar John Wenham concludes, 'There is no reason to doubt that the canon of the Old Testament is substantially Ezra's canon, just as the Pentateuch was substantially Moses' canon.'"

Another slide showed: 'Jesus, His Disciples, and the Early Church Leaders.'

Trey began to explain again, "For their part, the Christian community both in the days of Jesus and in the centuries following had no doubt that there was a body of books that made up the records of the old covenant. Since there are literally hundreds of direct quotations or clear allusions to Old Testament passages by Jesus and the apostles, it is evident what the early Christians thought of the Hebrew Scriptures."

"This is boring," someone in the back said.

"Pray," Meredith reminded again. 

I closed my eyes. Lord, let Your kingdom come and will be done in this lecture tonight.

Disclaimer: This info was taken from the article by Brian H. Edwards entitled "Why 66?" In the answersingenesis.org website.