Alright, so welcome to the intertestamental period. This is called the intertestamental period because it's just that. As someone mentioned in the introductions, when you're reading your Bible and you get to Malachi, the last book, you read it, Old Testament, the end, you turn the page and there's Matthew. The world has radically changed. Because at the end of the book of Malachi, the power that's on the world scene is Persia. The Jews have just rebuilt their temple. They're starting to rebuild the city, and Malachi gives the final prophecy, the final word of God. You turn that page, and all of a sudden, Rome's in power. You hear all these different groups, Sadducees, Pharisees. None of this stuff meant anything back in Malachi. So where did this come from? Why is Rome on the world stage now? What happened to Persia? Why is everything written in Greek? What are these synagogues that have popped up everywhere? And all of these questions are answered by studying this intertestament period between the two testaments. Now when you get into academic work, they don't call it the intertestamental period. They call it the second temple period. Does anybody know why they call it the second temple period? Is it because there was a second temple involved? There was a second temple. What happened to the first temple, Nate? It got destroyed. OK. The first temple was destroyed. And we'll talk about all this in more detail. And the second temple was built. And it was built about 516 and it would be destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. So that 516 BC to 70 AD is called the Second Temple Period. And that's the more academic term for this time period. Now in the church we use 400 years of silence because Malachi did his prophecy about 430 BC. And the announcement of, depending on when you consider the New Testament starting, either Gabriel announcing the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus, or John the Baptist saying, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, is about 400 years. But 400 years of silence is a misnomer. What do I mean by a misnomer? Not entirely correct? It's misnamed. It's not entirely correct. Because when you say 400 years of silence, speaking in Christianese language, what am I implying? Nothing was written. Nothing was written. There were no prophets walking around for those 400 odd years saying, thus saith the Lord. No scripture was written. But was God not working? God's definitely moving, and He's moving in some fantastic ways. Now this is not gonna be a traditional Bible study. I don't have a book of the Bible that we can go through line by line, and we can exegete it, and we can look at 15 commentaries to see what different people said about it. We're not going through a book of the Bible, excuse me, not a book of the Bible, but a book from like John MacArthur or John Piper, we can take home, read a nice chapter, come back and discuss what it was like, because everything written during this time is scattered. And here's what I mean by that. So one of the books that I used is called Between the Testaments by Charles Pfeiffer. It's this thin, it's very matter-of-fact, it just talks about the history. here's this king, here's what he did, he died, his son took over, he did this, he died, just boom, boom, boom. The next one I looked at is this book called Messianic Expectations. This is written by a Jewish scholar, not a Christian, this guy's a Jew, who specializes in Second Temple Rabbinic Judaism, and he talks about how Jews interpret the Old Testament Messianic prophecies. The next book that I use, and I recommend buying this because it's a lot of fun to read, this is an Orthodox Study Bible, Eastern Orthodox Study Bible. And it includes the Apocrypha. And we'll read some of the books of the Apocrypha. The Wisdom of Solomon I really like, we'll go through that in detail because it's fascinating and it's my class. But what I want everybody here to understand is I don't have this giant long outline of what this course is going to be. I have a general idea of the topics I want to discuss. And what this means is that this class is, I can definitely fine tune it to what interests you. So if two or three weeks in, you hear something, hey, I would really like to hear more about this, then I can work that into the schedule. Now if you're in this class, it also tells me that you're ready to learn more than most people. So what I'm going to expect out of you guys is besides showing up and being here, I would like you to read some stuff and come ask me questions. When I teach kids, I tell them I don't judge you by the answers you give me because I can teach a parrot to give me a good answer. I'm going to judge you by the questions you ask. If you're engaged, if you're intrigued by this, then you're going to naturally ask questions. And I would hope that would naturally lead you to study on your own and come to class and share with all of us. Is that a fair expectation? Okay. Now, if you don't want to buy this, this was, how much was this? 50 bucks at Barnes and Nobles. You can get a free app on your phone that has the Apocrypha on it. It's just not as easy to take notes. And mine's already underlined and highlighted and cross-referenced and all that. And the good thing about buying the study Bible is when I flip to Book of Maccabees, the editors of this have already done a lot of cross-work for me. They have notes, they have see, you know, Judges chapter three for a comparison, or they'll say, hey, look in for the New Testament, look in First Timothy chapter three, and they've done all that legwork for me. So this has saved me a lot of time. But if you don't want to buy that, get an app, it's free. All right, so ask good questions. Come prepared to share with what you've learned with the class. All right, so I wanna start out, we're gonna talk about first the Bible as literature. The first, today's gonna be more lecture, but don't hesitate to stop me and ask a question, okay? All right? All right, Bible as literature. Bible is divided into two main parts. What are they? Old Testament and New Testament. Old Testament, New Testament. Excellent, easy. Now, how is the Old Testament working now? I'm gonna go to that board right, say that again? How is the Old Testament divided up? Okay, that's only for history. Okay, the Torah, history, poetry, major prophets, minor prophets. Okay, three main divisions. First, the first 17 of the books of the Bible are your history books. They are pretty much in chronological order. The next five books are all poetry. This is the way the Hebrews grouped their writings. They had historical books first, then they put the poetry, and the last 17 are the prophetic books. Now the reason I'm teaching you this is because when we start studying the Apocrypha, there's a lot of argument as to why do Orthodox and Catholics include this in their canon, and why do Protestants leave it out? And the debate is, well, this book is definitely history, it should be here. And then you have these people debating, well, why is this not a historical book, it's a poetry book? I'm not gonna get too much into that, but I want you to be aware that these discussions exist. And one reason you need to know this, you mentioned you got on some apologetic stuff. You get on YouTube and you can find all kinds of poops. But they'll say something along the lines of, you Christians don't even know that most of the writings of Jesus were left out of the Bible. And they'll start mentioning the gospel of Mary Magdalene, the gospel of Thomas. They'll mention all of these books, the book of Enoch, that were intentionally left out and suppressed by the church because they wanted to shape reality as they saw fit and keep all its own ignorance. And when you have a massive gap in knowledge, you don't have an answer for that. So part of the reason that I started down this rabbit hole myself is for the same reason. I don't like people attacking my faith and I have nothing to say back in defense of it. So the Old Testament, you got your history, your poetry, and your prophecy. Now the New Testament, I'm not gonna get too much into that in this class, there might be a part two, but it also is organized in a certain way. The first five books, your four gospels and the books of Acts, are your historical books. The next 13 are all written by what man? Paul. Paul. The last nine books are called general epistles, so you got your history, your Pauline epistles, and then you come to your general epistles. And do you know what the book that separates the Pauline epistles from the general epistles is? It's Hebrews. And why was it put there, in that location? Anybody know? They don't really know who wrote it. They think it's Paul, so they kind of put it at the end of Paul's writings, but it's just quite uncertain, so they left it with the general epistles. I think it's Paul, but that's not here or there. So the Bible by itself, yes, the author is God, but how many authors are there in our Bible? Anybody know? Forty. Forty is the number that gets thrown out. About forty-ish. Forty-ish. Forty-ish. We'll say forty-ish. That's a fair number because I looked up multiple sites and some people say no, it's thirty-nine. Some say no, it's forty-three. It's about forty. That's a good number. Everybody can remember that. How many feet are in a mile? Of course, of course, you don't know what that is look it up So you got your Bible in Old Testament New Testament? 40 authors and they are very diverse people. Okay, there are some are humble shepherds Some are Kings you have prophets you have these wise men. So the Bible is written from a very eclectic group of myths But yet through all of it, there's what's called the scarlet thread. You can trace Christ from Genesis 8 all the way through Revelation. The Bible is written over a period of 1,400 years, from about 1,400 B.C. is about when we date Moses, all the way to 100 A.D. ending with the book of Revelation, written on three different continents. All right, so what are we going to talk about in this class? We're going to discuss the Bible from creation up into the time of the exile. I'm just going to cover that very briefly. We're going to start studying that exile period in pretty good detail. Everybody know what I mean by the exile? If not, you'll hear in a few minutes. So we'll be talking about the Babylonian Empire, Persian Empire, Greek, the Roman Empire, We're gonna be talking about the various Jewish sects that rose up during the inter-Testament period. You got the Sadducees and the Pharisees are the most well-known, but we're talking about the Herodians, we're talking about the Saqqari, those are some pretty cool people there, and there were several other groups that were vying for power. One thing that this book right here really wanted to emphasize is that Jewish understandings of who the Messiah was It was not monolithic. In other words, they did not all agree. You had various groups that were interpreting the Old Testament scriptures in radically different ways. So that's why when Jesus shows up, some people say, oh, well, of course it's him. And then you've got these other groups say, oh, no, that can't be him because this, this, and this. So they're arguing back and forth. We'll be talking about The Maccabean Rebellion, you said you did your study on that. So talking about Justice Maccabees and all that, which gave birth to the Hasmonean Dynasty. Anybody ever heard of the Hasmonean Dynasty before? Raise your hand if you've never heard of Hasmonean Dynasty. That's fantastic. Good, because you're going to. Not tonight, but you will. All right, we're talking about the Septuagint. What is the Septuagint? What's that? Greek translation of the Old Testament. Yeah, the Old Testament. And there's not one Septuagint. There's multiple Septuagints. So, what does that mean for us? And that leads to this discussion, well, can we trust the Bible that we have? Is it a faithful translation? Do we have all the books? All that stuff can come out of the Septuagint. What's also interesting is in most Protestant Bibles, like here's my ESV study Bible, when Jesus and the Apostles quote the New Testament, and you can look down in the notes and say, oh, see, Isaiah whatever. So you turn back to Isaiah whatever and you read that, it is similar to, but it's not exactly the same as what Jesus And the apostles quoted. So why is it different? Well, that's because Jesus and the apostles were quoting from the Septuagint. The ESV Study Bible, my Old Testament, does not come from the Septuagint. It comes from what's called the Masoretic Text. And we'll talk about that. Any questions so far? Has anybody said, ooh, that sounds neat, and I want to hear more about that, or all this sounds dumb, and I'm not coming back next week? So then we're going to get into the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha, which my guess is that most of you, that's kind of why you're here, you want to read the very weird stuff. Alright, so you have the Apocrypha. Those are not secret, hidden books. You can buy them at Barnes & Noble. Okay? They're not hidden. They've been in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles for over a thousand years. Okay? They're not hidden. Now what does Apocrypha mean? Anybody know what that means? Apocryphal? If you say a book is apocryphal, that's what you're saying. When you say the Apocrypha, you're talking about a very specific set of books that the Catholics and Orthodox include. So 1st, 2nd Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, stuff like that. And we'll look at the nuances later when we're going through it. Having read through the Apocrypha, there is nothing that is blatantly heretical about it. Now when we get into the pseudepigrapha, that's a different animal. Pseudepigrapha, everybody knows what the prefix pseudo means, right? What does it mean? Can somebody just tell me to watch my mouth? Okay, it means false, right? And grapha means right. So it's a false right. And particularly, it has to do with who is who. claimed to be the author. So the book of Enoch is claimed to be written by Enoch. But most people would say, no, Enoch did not write that. Now, that actually might be a problem for us Protestants that do not include. See, the Ethiopian Orthodox, such as multiple Orthodox churches, the Ethiopian Orthodox, they include Enoch in their text. Anybody just know off the top of their head why we could have a problem saying Enoch did not write what is called the Book of Enoch? I'm just curious. Oh, Jude straight up quotes the Book of Enoch. Jude the seventh from Adam prophesied the seven, behold the Lord cometh with 10,000 other saints. Now if we accept Jude as scripture, that is divinely inspired, word of God, and it quotes a passage and says, this is what Enoch, which Enoch, the guy who was the seventh generation from Adam, then I'm going to have to therefore conclude that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, said the following words. What's that? By what to be consistent. And we'll get into more of that later, but you have to actually be in class to hear more of that discussion. So the pseudepigrapha, there's lots of stuff like that. Most of what is called the New Testament apocryphal writings, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Gospel of Peter, there's a bunch of them out there. Those are even secular, non-religious scholars who scoff at Christianity will say those books are true pseudepigraphas. Mary Magdalene did not pen this right. Thomas did not pin this writing. So what happens is people would take the name of somebody famous, somebody from the Old Testament and that list of genealogies, or they take someone who is in Jesus' circle and they'll put that person's name on their writings. Why would they do that? They want to sell books, okay? They want to make money. Newsflash, people have been greedy for all of eternity, okay? Well, eternity passed and until Jesus comes back, people want to be greedy, they want to sell books. And if I write, well actually the Gospel of Michael might sound like it's from an angel. But if I wrote the Gospel of Bob, no one's going to read the Gospel of Bob. So what does Bob do? He flips through one of these boring lists and numbers that everybody skips over and say Eleazar. Oh, that sounds cool. The prophecies of Eleazar. And all of a sudden it's the number one bestseller on Amazon. People were doing that hundreds of years ago. That's what the pseudepigrapha is. We're going to probably spend a whole day talking about Greek culture. Their religion, Zeus, Hera, all this stuff. Which god slept with which goddess and what other goddess got mad because he cheated on her. This actually plays a role in Christianity. Does anybody know why? Why would we need to know that? There's sites and stuff going in it where like how they interact with the Greek culture. Absolutely when you look especially in the book of Acts When the Apostles are interacting with all as they're going out to the Gentiles These Gentiles are talking about their gods what they thought They thought Paul was some god. Hermes, I think. Yeah, they thought one of them was the messenger god, like Hermes, and they thought the other guy was Zeus. Yeah, part of this. Yeah. And you need to know why that. Why did they think that the main speaker wasn't Zeus and the quiet guy was Zeus? Why do they quote Greek philosophers and poets, they being the apostles, when they're arguing with Gentiles about the reality of who Christ is? All of this plays into the New Testament. And if you know where it's coming from, it makes the New Testament, yeah, it makes it much more interesting to read. It's like, oh, that's why they're quoting Greek philosophers. That's why this line of Greek poetry is being mentioned. That's why these gods are being mentioned and alluded to. That's why in the book of Acts, when Paul convinces people to stop building idols, that the people who made idols main idols start a riot and they're like great is our goddess Artemis great as Artemis Artemis is fantastic And you need to know what are they trying to do? So we'll look at all that stuff. So the poetry the philosophy stoicism epicureanism You don't know who are who is so crates. I Yes, and why did I pronounce it Socrates? Yes, and I make pop culture references all the time. Definitely Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Socrates was a smart dude. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. We're looking at those guys. And part of the reason why is that the critics of Christianity will say, oh, your God is nothing more than a copy of Neoplatonic thought that influenced these Jewish writers who tried to synchronize the two yada, yada, yada, nerdy stuff. And if they just start throwing all these academic words out there, sometimes they can dazzle you with their brilliance, but they're not saying anything. They're using a lot of big words, and if you know what those big words mean, you're not intimidated by it. So be looking at that stuff. The Olympics is actually a very big thing. So everybody knows that the Greeks started the Olympics, right? That's going to play a big role when we get to that Intertestament period time and the influence that the Greek culture of sports had on the Jewish population. You think people are fanatics about their teams today? Wait until you hear how much influence it had on the Jewish culture around 200 to 160 BC. Yeah As long as you got first you got to live No, that was the, like, Aztecs and stuff. The Greeks did not kill the second place, sacrifice them to their gods. That's, yeah. That was Central and South America culture. That'd be the next class I teach on that. Nothing to do whatsoever with the Bible. I don't think I can. It'd be a stretch. I would really have to stretch it to get that class approved. There's a guy named Philo of Alexandria. He was big at using the word Logos when he talked about deity. Y'all heard that word Logos before? Greek word, what does it mean? The word. Yeah, John was not the first person to use that word in relation to deity. It's a Jewish philosopher who adopted, who changed his Jewish last name to Alexandria. He wanted to go by Philo of Alexandria, more than you want to go by his Jewish last name. That tells you a little bit about the culture back then. But the fact that this guy is using the word Logos and is ascribing deity to it, again, you've got this idea of, oh, well, John is just plagiarizing somebody else. We'll talk about that. We'll look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. We'll look at some of the other really fascinating archaeological finds. that people have found these papyri that contain Old Testament stuff, Inter-Testament writings. Fascinating, fascinating. And if we have time, we'll look at the New Testament apocryphal stuff. But mostly we're going to be staying in that Inter-Testament period. Alright, does anybody have any questions about what I went over? You can't see that far. I do. Some things I do want now. I want it right now. Sometimes I don't want to wait two days. Alright, so that's a rough outline of what I want to cover. I don't have to cover everything on that list. I can cover more. And again, if you guys bring something to me, hey, I found this, let's talk about it, that's cool, just you gotta be prepared to talk about it yourself. The only person I would give an exception to is my wife. She's the only one who doesn't have to speak in this class. She keeps me on track. She has a hard enough job as it is. Alright, so the rest of this class, period, what we're going to do is... What's that? Nothing. I will tell you later. Do I need to stop the recording and back up a little bit? 7.13 maybe. Okay. Class is going to end at 7.35 is when I'm going to get done. So if it's 7.34 and I'm still Wave at me, I got gifts to pick up. What's that? Okay, yeah, just get up and start waving at me, yeah. That would not hurt my feelings at all. All right, so for the rest of the class, in order to set the stage, we need to talk about my favorite book of the Bible, okay? Book of Daniel. So I'm gonna build up to that. Now the reason why is because Daniel's prophecies set the stage for that intertestament period. Some of those prophecies are extremely detailed, and we'll look at that when I get to it. So real quick, we've got to cover from creation all the way up until the book of Daniel starts with the exile. So the first story in the Bible is huge. God creates the heavens and the earth out of nothing. And when we get to the intertestament writing, those guys really hammer that fact. God created everything from nothing. And they wax very poetically about it. A lot of them read like Proverbs. So God created everything, made Adam and Eve, and they were perfect. But then the fall happened. So they're expelled from paradise. And for the next several generations, wickedness prevails. Up until it's so bad, God says, I'm going to wipe everyone out. And he chooses one man who is righteous. And that, of course, is Noah. So he says, I want you to build this boat. For 100 years, Noah builds this boat. During that time, what do you think the people around him are doing? They're mocking this guy. They're scoffing at him. Why are you building a giant boat? Well, God said he's going to flood the earth. What do you mean he's going to flood the earth? Well, it's going to rain. What's rain? Whole discussion. But the point is, after building this boat, God brings Noah and his family and at least two of every animal onto the ark. And then he says, God shuts this door. And after God shut the door, the rain started. And the floodwaters came up. Picture geysers erupting and water shooting up everywhere. And at that moment, those people who had been scoffing, what are they doing at this point? Banging on that door. Oh, no. Yes. I mean, you can just picture them banging on that door, let us in, let us in. But Noah couldn't open that door if he wanted to. Why not? Because God shut it. God shut that door. So the world floods. Noah gets off. God says, scatter, repopulate, but humanity says, nah, we're going to build a giant tower up into the heavens so we can be like God's ourselves. God says, he ain't going to do that. Confuses their languages, scatters them all over the place. For the next several hundred years, that's what humanity is. They're scattered all around. They lose pretty much every knowledge of who Yahweh is until God calls one man. Who's this one man? Abraham. Abraham has Isaac. Isaac has Jacob. Jacob has how many sons? Twelve. Jacob is sold into slavery. He goes over to Egypt. I thought that was Joseph. Joseph, what did I say? Jacob. Joseph, thank you. See, that was intentional. I did that as a test. It was a test. Yes, test. You passed. Good job. So Joseph gets sold into slavery, goes over to Egypt. Because he's faithful to God through a series of miraculous events and twists and turns, he finds himself being the premier of Egypt. He's in charge of making sure Egypt survives the seven years of famine that are coming. So when the famine starts, guess who shows up to Egypt to buy some of the extra food? So after they hug it out, everything's great, he says, come live in Egypt, I'll take care of you. 70 people move from the promised land over to Egypt where they stay for 200 or 400 years, depending on how you interpret scripture. We could talk about that, probably not. So after, I say, 230 years, a new pharaoh rises up who doesn't know Joseph, and he says, hey, I got this minority population that's becoming a problem. They're starting to outnumber us. I have to control this minority population. I know I will enslave them. Well, that doesn't work. They start producing even more babies. Oh, I'll know. I'll start killing the babies. Well, God, through his divine sovereignty, rescues one little baby. Wait till he's done asking the question. Yes, come on man. Wait till I do this. So Moses floated down the river, found by Pharaoh's daughter, is raised in the court of the king, I mean this guy is for all intents and purposes a prince of Egypt, sees one of his fellow Jews being mistreated by an Egyptian, kills the Egyptian, flees because he doesn't want to get punished. Runs down to the desert, hides out for 40 years until God speaks to him through a burning bush. Says, you're going to go rescue my people. He goes back to Pharaoh, says, let my people go. He sings the song. Pharaoh says, no. He says, you better sing, sing. That's what I'm talking about. Passover happened. God tells, look, I'm going to send this final plague. I've already mocked all the Egyptian gods from the first nine. They were direct attacks on the Egyptian pantheon. This final plague is going to be different. The Jews never had to do anything for the first nine. For this final plague, he says, I want you to take a perfect spotless lamb. I want you to sacrifice it. I want you to let it flood on the door panel post up around it like this. And if you do this, when the death angel comes to the night, what will it do? Pass over you. So, that happens, the Jews are spared, the firstborn of all the Egyptians die, they say, take our gold and get out of here, we don't want anything more to do with you Jews. The Jews wander around the desert for 40 years, Moses dies, who takes over? Joshua. Joshua does. This starts the conquest of the promised land. God says, go in there and wipe absolutely everybody out. He says, if you don't wipe them out, they're going to teach you to do their pagan practices. And they were horrible, horrible things, like burning children alive. The Jews started, they were 99% successful in what they do. They moved a little bit around and said, we'll make them our slaves. That doesn't work too well because these people are allowed to stay in the land. What do they teach the Jews to do? They're a pagan practice. In fact, the Jews were just as bad as the Canaanites who were there. So for the next 400 years, you have this period of the judges. Am I speaking too fast or y'all good? 40 years. The Jews are great. They fall into idolatry. God punishes them by putting them into slavery, typically to the Philistines. They say, oh God, we're sorry. He raises up a judge who delivers them. Yay, we're great. And everything's hunky-dory until that judge dies. Then they fall into idolatry. God puts them into slavery. Oh God, we're sorry. God raises up a judge who delivers them. Yay, we're happy. We're great. that just dies, and it repeats over and over for 400 years and then people get sick of it. Hey God, we want to be like everybody else. We want a king. God says, you don't want a king, he'll be a jerk. No, we really want a king. No, you don't. Yes, we do. No, you don't. Yes, we do. Fine, here's a king, and he gives him the biggest jerk ever, whose name was? Saul. Saul. Saul was a jerk. He has the kingdom taken away from him because he's a jerk, and God raises up one man who has a heart like him. His name is? David. Awesome. David becomes king. He has a son named Solomon who builds this beautiful temple. First temple Judaism now. So you got this first temple, that's built. Solomon dies, he has a son named Rehoboam. What? Temple destroyed when Babylon. No, no, no, no, you're skipping. Not yet, not yet. Don't skip ahead. You just skip like 200 years, man. Rehoboam, who's an idiot. Rehoboam, he's not the wisest guy. Idiot. When he gets the throne, he gets a delegation from the 10 northern tribes, because there were 12 tribes, 12 sons of Jacob. The 10 northern tribes send a delegation down right before the coronation. They're like, look, your dad was kind of hard on us. He gave us a lot of taxes. He worked us. Will you please cut us some slack? Lower taxes don't make us work so much. Ray Baum says, OK, I'll think about it. He goes to his father's advisors, these wise old men who'd been around the block a time or two. He says, hey, what should I do? They're like, your dad was kind of a jerk to them. You need to give them what they want. Eh, I don't like that answer. He goes to his friends, who are a bunch of rich, spoiled brats who grew up in the court, never had to do anything. Mommy and daddy paid for everything. This is how my brain works. And he says, hey, what should I do? And his pal is telling, you need to go back and tell those 10 guys from the north, the northern delegation, if you think my father was bad, you make a suggestion. Yeah, I'm gonna double your taxes and make you work harder. He's like, yeah, that sounds cool. I'm gonna be a tough guy. So he goes back to that delegation from the north, and he tells them that. And they say, all right, we quit. And the guy named Jeroboam, leads that rebellion. It never goes to open warfare. God steps in and stops it. But God promises Jeroboam that if you follow my statutes, I'll establish your kingdom forever just like I had promised David. Jeroboam says okay. And within a year, Jeroboam says eh. And he builds two alternate places of worship. One right at the border with the southern kingdom of Judah and one way up in the north. Why would he build them there? So they don't have to go so far. They don't have to go so far. It's brilliant. I don't want mine. I believe it's convenience. Extreme convenience. I don't want my subject of my new kingdom, he called his kingdom Israel, his subject was Judah. I don't want them walking 10 miles to the south to go to Jerusalem, and the Bible says this, because if they do, they might fall back in love with Rehoboam and kill me. Even if God had just promised to establish your kingdom forever. So right out the gate, he's disregarding everything God has said. So he dies because of God's judgment. The next guy dies because of God's judgment. And every king that the northern kingdom had of Israel was absolutely wicked. Horrible, child-sacrificing, murderous psychopaths. They're just bad, bad people. And God punishes them how? The Assyrians. The Assyrians are this bloodthirsty group, capital city of Nineveh, read the Book of Jonah, and you see what Jonah thinks about them. But they come in and they are brutal. They would take the captives, skin them alive, and nail their skin to the gates and walls around and say, this is what happens if you don't surrender to us. Not very nice people. They march all the way down, and they're about to besiege Jerusalem itself. but the king, I think it's Hezekiah, prays and God intervenes and saves the southern kingdom, because they had a few righteous kings. But eventually God punishes the southern kingdom, how? By Babylon. And this is what starts a cycle here, and this is where we're gonna slow down, and next week we'll look at this in more detail. Because during this exile period, The Jewish culture is going to change. It's going to experience a metamorphosis that sets the stage for the Intertestament period. Why is the writings of the Intertestament not written in Hebrew? Why do the people in the New Testament period speak Aramaic and not Hebrew? And all of these questions are answered. So I'm going to start to slow down and speak a little bit more slowly here. Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. Babylon started out as nothing more of a province to the Assyrian Empire. But as its influence and power grew, Assyria declined. And eventually, Babylon saw an opportunity to overthrow the Assyrian bondage. And that's what they did. They became the new king on the block. And as Nebuchadnezzar started conquering city after city, he came to Jerusalem. Jeremiah was a prophet who was active during his time the same from the Bible and The people were asking him should we make an alliance with Egypt because Egypt that power way down south is also threatened by this rising Kingdom of Babylon like look Egypt swears their help us Babylon has been unstoppable. We can't stop them ourselves. Let's form an alliance with Egypt and Jeremiah says you you do not need to do that. That will not work out. God is bringing judgment. It is too late. Babylon is going to win. You should not resist them at all. Now, how do you think the people of Israel felt when the prophet of the Lord is telling them this incredibly bad news? They did not like it. Jeremiah was not a popular man during his life. Well, the Jews formed this alliance with Egypt and they Resist mightily Babylon who just crushes Egypt their support was never what it was promised Babylon conquers Jerusalem and what Nebuchadnezzar does is Brilliant. He actually was not that bad to Jerusalem says okay. I've conquered you that was pathetic and the resistance was nominal and he says I'm going to take your children and Not just any children, I'm taking the leader's children, I'm taking the smartest children, the best looking children, the most athletic children, I'm taking them from you, and I'm going to transfer them to my empire. Now why is that a brilliant, shrewd move by Medi Panetta? What's that? Yeah, and he removes, what else does it get me? Leverage. Leverage. He has a whole bunch of hostages. Because if I'm a Hebrew general, and I'm not part of that exile to Babylon, if I'm back here, I'm somebody who's capable of organizing a resistance. But if he has my daughters and sons over in Babylon, what happens if my rebellion fails? Or even if it is successful? They're all scared to die. They're dead. So he has hostages to keep these people that are still back in Jerusalem under control. But like you said, he has increased his workforce. He didn't pick the dummies. He picked the best that he could get. The future lawyers, doctors, engineers, those type of people have been removed. From a conquered nation, I'm taking them back to my capital. And he picked the children. Why the children? Besides the hostage aspect. Why the children? Longevity on investment return. Return of investment? What else? There's also awakening Babylonians to their culture, adapting them. That's the key. The children are malleable. I can change them. And we see that when you read Daniel chapter 1. He immediately changes their diet. He takes their Hebrew names that are typically associated with the worship of Yahweh somehow. He gives them Babylonian names. So he changes their names, their language, makes them learn Babylonian. Aramaic is the language they spoke. He makes them learn all the sciences and math and religion and astrology of Babylon. What is he erasing? Their tithes, their culture. Erasing their culture. He is making them be transformed from Jewish to Babylonia. How long do they stay in captivity? 70 years. And what you see is in the writings outside of scripture that we have from this time period, when they come back 70 years later, they don't speak Hebrew. It took 70 years to reduce the language that was spoken through all of the Israelites It took 70 years to pretty much erase it. Only the scholars would know it. By the time Jesus comes on the scene, what is the common language that the Hebrews speak? Koine Greek. Koine Greek. When they're back in their own houses together, they'll speak Aramaic, which is the Babylonian language. So what Nebuchadnezzar did was incredibly, incredibly effectual. He pretty much erased Hebrew from those people. It's gone. So why does Jesus cry out in Aramaic when he's on the cross? Because people didn't speak Hebrew. Why was the Septuagint so badly needed? Why did they need their scriptures in Greek? Because the Jews didn't speak Hebrew. So that sets the stage for the rest of the intertestament period. Because the Jews were so traumatized, culturally traumatized, by what they endured under the hands of the Babylonians, that these different groups that form Sadducees, Pharisees, Rodians, Essenes, all these different groups are all concerned about preserving some element of Jewish culture that had been lost during those 70 years of captivity. And you look at the writings of the prophets that come during that Second Temple period, they are all about restoring as much as they can. So we'll get to that in detail tomorrow. We'll go through the book of Daniel. We're going to look at the major prophecies of Daniel. particularly chapter 2, 7, 8, and 11. And we'll look at some of the attacks on Daniel. Because Daniel's going to set the framework that I'm going to make, you're going to be required to memorize Daniel chapter 2, the statue and what it means, if nothing else. And we'll use that kind of to walk through the rest of the class. All right. I can end three minutes earlier than I intended. Anybody have any questions about what we covered? Yes. When did the Jews return to using Hebrew? Like just historically? Oh, like the language being remade? 1948? When they came back as a state? Yeah. Yeah, when they came back from like 39 different countries and they were like, oh man, I don't speak Czech. I don't speak English. I don't speak French. I don't speak German. We should find this. Let's do the Hebrew thing. And so they fired that thing back up. Spent 10 years trying to figure out how to make new words. So when you hear people talk about they're afraid of losing their culture, it can happen very quick. 70 years is nothing. 70 years is a blink of the eye. And it can last 2,000 years. So yes, the idea of cultural identity is extremely important, and that's something that Nebuchadnezzar, actually I believe Nebuchadnezzar got saved, but that's for a different class. What he did was extremely effectual, and it worked well, and it changed the course of Israelite history forever. Oh yeah, it was a common practice what Nebuchadnezzar did. And we'll see, because Nebuchadnezzar actually sacked Jerusalem three times. Like the first time, it was a cakewalk, it was nothing. That's when Daniel was exiled. Some king got uppity and decided, oh, I can fight him back. That lasted about 30 minutes. And then another king said, oh, I can do what the other guy failed to do. That lasted even less time, and that's when Nebuchadnezzar destroys the temple. And he just goes in there and massacres, mounts the people. That was when he really dropped the hammer. So, yeah, Jerusalem was attacked three times by Nebuchadnezzar. I have a question, but I think it's interesting, you know, how I believe it's something that Christ is talking about how I'll take even what he has away. You know, when he does the parable of the talents and he gives it to, it's almost like the Lord Spent all these you know thousands of years drumming into the Israelites head. This is the sort of God I am this is the sort of people you're supposed to be and they continued to rebel against him and he said I'll snatch it away then and then they Become a culture that Yeah, and even If you talk about how bad the northern kingdom was for their child sacrifice, some of the southern kingdom, the descendants of David, the line of David, I will have a descendant of yours sitting on the throne forever, they did the same thing. So a lot of people say, how could a loving God do this? How could a loving God not bring judgment for that? One of the attacks you would hear against Christianity is, well, you know, Yahweh wasn't always the only God worshipped in Israel. They had a whole pantheon of gods. God had a wife named Asherah. I bet you didn't know that. What's the point? Yes, they had a whole pantheon of gods and they were constantly punished for worshipping that pantheon of gods. The Bible doesn't hide that. That's not a hidden fact of the Bible. Yes, the Jews were constantly falling into They were constantly dabbling in polytheism. So yes, you go to archaeological sites in Israel and you'll find evidence of polytheism in Israel when they were supposed to be monotheistic. Duh. That's why Assyria and Babylon captivities happened. So, yeah, next week we'll pick up on that, talk a little bit more about the Assyrians, about what they did after they conquered, and what Babylon did. And we'll talk about the Book of Mormon at some point in this class, and what that has to do with the Apocrypha. I'm not gonna mention it again, I wanna see if any of you remember that, and figure out a connection between the two. All right, any questions, comments, or snide remarks? Yes. I'm not going to, no, no. It's not going to come up for like another five or six weeks, but I just want to see if anyone remembers what the rules of the Book of Mormon have to do with the intercessory period. Nope. Nope. As we discuss different things, I just want to see if it clicks. I just want to see if it clicks. Alright, no questions? None whatsoever? All right. I've already forgotten half of your names. I'm horrible with names. Don't take it personally. We're going to have snacks next week. If you bring them, yes. Yeah. Great. Chris, you bring it. We will eat whatever you bring us. Yeah. All of this good. All right. Volunteer. Yes. Let's pray. And we're going to be dismissed. Father, I thank you for today. Lord, I thank you for everyone that's here. Lord, I pray this will be a beneficial class that we will learn, that we will Have an appreciation for your word, that it was preserved, that we can have complete confidence in it. Lord, I pray this will be beneficial and that you'll be glorified. In your name we pray, amen. All right, I'll see you guys next week.