So I grabbed my copy of N.T. Wright's The New Testament and the People of God It's his book about the historical context New Testament from a somewhat historical perspective.
Pages 252-254
> Jews in general did not divide the world rigidly into the physical and the noumenal/spiritual (254 - first paragraph).
I think he uses Philo (a Jewish philosopher) to come to this conclusion.
I could probably be butchering this though. N.T. Wright's book might be helpful. https://www.amazon.com/Testament-Christian-Origins-Question-Paperback/dp/0800626818
EDIT ::to clarify the book is about roughly First and early Second Century:: Christianity.
I like this series. It's not so much about the construction of the canon, but does cover a lot of the history and the deuterocanonical and apocryphal texts that were floating around at the time.
I think you could put together some ideas and end up with your pastor not being wrong - the early church used the list of books that would eventually come out of Jamnia, but in the LXX translation. However, we don't have a lot of evidence for the Council of Jamnia, and it's common to believe that no such council even existed. I guess I wouldn't be too hard on the guy, since there's still interesting research ongoing in this area.
God did speak for himself. That's the authority that I case my claims upon.
Ok, links: https://www.amazon.com/Testament-Christian-Origins-Question-Paperback/dp/0800626818 https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Christian-Origins-Question-Vol/dp/0800626796 http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/garyhabermas.htm https://historyofphilosophy.net/
Yup, this. +1
>I often see the argument that Matthew et al. had to be written post-70AD, because Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Temple which had occurred in 70AD.
Ahh, the good old "god don't real bc god don't real" argument. We can dig up old manuscripts, try to compare the contents of the gospels and non-canonical works, see if the ideas we find in the gospels are expressed in any other known-contemporary writings, and things like that. An interesting argument for an early date for the gospels goes that if the church made them up in 100AD or whenever, why don't the gospels address any of the concerns we knew the church had at that time? Why did nobody invent Matthew 5:9000 where Jesus says "seriously guys, don't keep celebrating Jewish festivals after Easter"?
As far as I understand it, it's building up a framework of guesses and theories and trying to determine which one is the most consistent, makes the most sense and useful predictions, and is supported by the texts we have.
This is a good series of books. It's not focused solely on your question, but it's part of what it covers.