The Standing For Truth channel posted moderated the debate DEBATE | Does The OT Teach That God Is Only One Person? Sam Shamoun VS. Otis Lewis.
Since I’ve written quite a bit regarding 1 Enoch, which leads to issues of canon, I thought to focus on some (very repetitive) arguments made by Otis Lewis as to why he continuously appealed to apocryphal texts such as Jubilees and 1 Enoch (which is Bible contradicting folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah, see my book, In Consideration of the Book(s) of Enoch).
His modus operandi is quite simple to discern (especially since he so oft repeated it) so as to why appeal to the Book of Jubilee, he noted:
The nation of Ethiopia has been with children of Israel since the days of Moses so they would have the correct canon of the Bible, inside that canon is something extraordinary…
If you go and search the Ethiopian Bible you’ll get a better shot at this…
Ethiopia has been with Israel, they hung around Israel since the days of Moses, okay, not anybody outside of the African continent, or Europe, anybody in Europe, was dealing with Israelites…
Ethiopia has had this canon since the days of Moses…
The reason why you reject the Book of Jubilees is because it’s from Ethiopia, the land of Africa, that’s why not you, but that’s why the people are rejecting it…
Ethiopia has been dealing with Israel since the days of Moses…
Look in the Book of Jubilees and you will see and I appealed to history, because of this Ethiopia has had the law and the prophets well before and longer than any nation on this planet: any nation, well before the Roman Catholic Church, well before the Eastern Orthodox Church, well before Martin Luther and his Reformation wanted to decide hey, we’re not going to use the other books…
We see Solomon and, in Ethiopia, we see the Ethiopian helps out Jeremiah, we see that an Ethiopian is being baptized by Phillip. So, they’ve had—and he was reading Isaiah 53—we’ve had they’ve had this canon well before it was thought of by the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church or even Martin Luther…
I brought in the Book of Jubilees because remember this, the Ethiopians had it first, it did not come around until the Roman Empire took over and they, hold on, this is what they say they say to the Ethiopians, who was actually around messing with Israel in the time of Moses, so the Romans come around and tell the Ethiopians, uhuh, that’s not it, that’s not scripture, uhuh, that’s not scripture. We don’t listen to them, at least I don’t, I don’t listen to what the Romans have to say.
According to this book, because the Ethiopians who were around at the time of Moses at the, around of the time of Solomon at the, around of the time of Jeremiah, even God Almighty says in Amos are you not the children of Ethiopia unto me, He says beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my worshippers, He’s, the Lord loves the Ethiopians, and since He loves them and gave them scripture as well as the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah 53, I didn’t see not one Roman one, Roman, or today’s European, have the scriptures with them but I saw the Ethiopians, but all of a sudden we tell them, uhuh, that’s not scripture…
The Europeans, they’re not our authorities to tell you what to put in Bibles or not. The canon was around well before the Roman Empire, the canon was with the Ethiopians, so if we want to be correct, go to the Ethiopian Canon of the Bible…
Ethiopia, the nation that is actually mentioned in the Old Testament, hanging around the Israelites hang around him Moses married in Ethiopia…
Queen of Shiva and Solomon, Ethiopia, um, Jeremiah when they put him in the well, Ethiopian helped him out, Ethiopian, um, Amos when God speaks…we see that Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch: what is he doing? He’s reading Isaiah 53…the interaction between the Ethiopians and the children of Israel…well before that was any council that you want to put up, anyone that’s canonizing the Bible, Jubilees was there because it’s in the nation of bet Israel, which is in Ethiopia, it is in their canon…
Ethiopia had it, that’s why I appeal, I appeal to somebody that had it first…
God dealt with Ethiopia well before he dealt with anybody any European nation…
Patters emerge, do they not?
One fallacy is the mere asserted implication that older is better, more accurate, but that’s called the historical fallacy.
Having various interactions with Israel from antiquity may have resulted in a reliable canon but is not necessarily a chain of causation.
What was the Ethiopian eunuch reading long after the days of Moses: Isaiah, not Jubilees nor any of the Enoch books.
Now, note that Otis also pointed out, “That canon that they have has the Book of Jubilees, has 1st and 2nd Enoch” and be provides this insight that canon’s contents as he notes that in, “2nd Enoch, God says to Enoch, He says that, I alone, I alone went about, and He said He didn’t find peace within Himself: this is why He starts to create, to bring peace within Himself.”
Well, that’s violates just about any and every aspect of theology proper. It’s not surprising that as a non-trinitarian that appeals to Otis as to why God created. Yet, a trinitarian view elucidates that not only was such not the case but couldn’t be. As I noted in The Original Trinitarian Metaethical Theory for Objective Morality:
God’s nature is relational and benevolent, eternal and free from conflict. God enjoys relationships and encourages His creation to enjoy likewise relationships. Life consists of enjoying relationships with humans grounded upon the enjoyment of an eternal relationship with God. The relationship among the Godhead is truly dynamic as it is enjoyed by three persons and also conflict free since God is one.
2nd Enoch’s, and so the current Ethiopian canon’s, theology is that the god described by them was not perfect, that god lacked, that god was in ontological conflict, etc.
And I noted, “current Ethiopian canon” because of something that Otis didn’t get around to noting: the Enoch books didn’t even exist until a few centuries BC so they were not around at the time when Ethiopians were messing with Moses, Solomon, Jeremiah, etc.—they were around when the eunuch encountered Philip but then, again, he wasn’t reading apocrypha.
That 1 Enoch is in the Ethiopian canon doesn’t make that one canon uniquely correct but rather, uniquely incorrect since Jubilees and the Enoch books are folklore from millennia after the Torah.
In fact, that cannon also contains a text titled, The Life of Adam and Eve which claims that when God created Adam, God commanded the Angels to worship Adam.
For more info on those sorts of books, see my book The Apocryphal Nephilim and Giants: Encountering Nephilim and Giants in Extra-Biblical Texts.
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