Hebrew Voices #84 – A Pastor Reviews My Latest Episodes (2018)

Hebrew Voices #84 – A Pastor Reviews My Latest Episodes (2018)

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: And I should tell people that I have an update on that, on something I discovered over the summer. That’s going to be “The Mistake That Got It Right: Part Three.” And what that update shows is, something I said there, based on the information I had at the time, turns out not to be correct but it actually confirms the conclusions even more solidly. It’s actually beyond what I expected.

Nehemia: Shalom, this is Nehemia Gordon and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Pastor AJ Bernard. Shalom, AJ.

AJ: Shalom, Nehemia. How are you?

Nehemia: I’m good. I’m really excited, because we’re going to be talking today about what we did in 2018, talk about the Hebrew Voices that were put out and the new support team studies that were put out. And before we get started, AJ, you know, we’ve done an episode in the past. Actually, I think a couple of episodes. We did one episode where we talked about this Hebrew text of the Book of Revelation. People can find that; we did that together with T-Bone. And what was the other one we did? Remind me.

AJ: We did two episodes on the Hebrew text of the Revelation, because the discussion just went so long, we had to break it apart. We also did the discussion which turned out to be Hebrew Voices number 37 on how the New Testament uses the Old Testament.

Nehemia: Oh, that was one of the best ones.

AJ: It was so much fun.

Nehemia: So, here we are, and what I wanted to do is, I asked you to go over all of the episodes that I’ve put out this year, and it was a lot. Like, I was shocked, because I’m the kind of person who, I look back and I say, “What did I really accomplish this year?” And I look back and I’m almost overwhelmed. Just to give people some idea, we put out, for Hebrew Voices, and I’m just talking brand new episodes that were not in Hebrew Voices before, 21 new episodes of Hebrew Voices and nine new support team studies. And, of course, there were some reruns that we broadcast, based on events that came up. So, AJ, what was your favorite episode of Hebrew Voices this year?

AJ: It’s really hard to pick, there were so many good episodes. The first episode of the year with the discovery of the 1,000 manuscripts was really exciting. But as I was going back and listening through all of the episodes to prepare for this one, my favorite episode without a doubt was the Jews for Guns, Hebrew Voices number 55 with Charles Heller, because it’s such a timely topic here in the States.

Nehemia: By the way, tell us a little bit about yourself. You’re in the States; where do you live? Just for people to know.

AJ: Yes. I am a United Methodist Pastor. I pastor at Victory Chapel United Methodist in Jackson, Ohio. If you’re wondering where Victory Chapel is, it is literally back in the hollow by the creek through the junkyard. It’s a little, tiny country church.

Nehemia: Is it literally through the junkyard?

AJ: Literally, and I’m using “literally” correctly there. Yes, you have to drive through a junkyard to get to my church.

Nehemia: Wow, okay.

AJ: But our people love the Lord. We sing the Shema every Sunday morning in Hebrew, yes.

Nehemia: Wow. Now, you go to a Sunday morning church, so this is the question that people are going to have. If you’re a Sunday Pastor, they’re going to make a whole set of assumptions about you. I want to just bring that up right now because you were recently with me in Denver, Colorado. Guys, listen to this. There’s four of us in Denver, Colorado. It’s me, and the United Methodist Pastor, and two Hebrew Roots believers. I call them “Hebrew Roots.” They don’t like that term, but people who believe in Yeshua and keep the Torah. And AJ says to the waitress, he says, “Everyone at this table eats kosher. Make sure there’s no pork in anything we order.” And so, people have a set of assumptions about you because you’re a United Methodist Pastor who actually pastors a Sunday church, but actually you do believe in keeping the Torah, right?

AJ: I do my best to keep Torah. I keep Shabbat from sundown Friday night till sundown Saturday night, and then I go to church on Sunday mornings.

Nehemia: All right, so let’s get back to your favorite episode, “Jews with Guns.” Let’s be honest here. In the United States, Jews are known to be on the leftist side of the agenda. Sometimes liberal, but I won’t use that term with someone who doesn’t believe in freedom, so often it’s just straight up leftist. And many of them are against guns. But also, there are Jews who are on the conservative side of the agenda. For example, Ben Shapiro, and Mark Levin, and Dennis Prager, right? So, you have Jews on both sides. And it turns out, one of the foremost organizations for defending the rights of people… and this isn’t a political issue. To me, this is a human rights issue. Defending people’s right to defend themselves with firearms is this organization, the “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.” And I got to speak to one of the representatives who represents that organization, a guy in Arizona who’s also originally from Chicago, who’s a refugee from Chicago because of the firearm laws that went into effect there. So, he’s literally a refugee because of this issue.

I wanted to do this for a very long time, this episode, but there have been the shootings and I said, “Okay, I have been putting this off for so long. Let’s talk about this. Let’s have this discussion out on the table.” Because to me, this is a human rights issue. There are people around the world who are being slaughtered and massacred, and the victims of genocide. The first thing the Nazis did in order to exterminate the Jews is they collected their guns. How did they know where the guns were? They had a firearm registry. That firearm registry was not set up by the Nazis, it was set up by a truly liberal government, the Weimar Republic. And no one, at the time that this registry went into effect, ever thought that Nazis would get to power. It was the last thing anybody thought. So, why not tell the government you have a gun? What do you have to hide? Until Hitler got to power, and that was the guidebook for where to raid and where to take the guns away. And then the people couldn’t defend themselves. Anyway… so what was your favorite thing about that episode? Why is that important to you?

AJ: Primarily because you had a long theme running through this year, sort of a sub-theme, I guess, of the Holocaust and being able to deal with the horrors that the Jewish people suffered. And then, here’s Mr. Heller giving examples of how guns are used defensively. He says something like, what was it? One thousand rapes and 500 murders, or something like that.

Nehemia: It was higher than that. Guys, go listen to the episode, “Jews for Guns.” These US government statistics are incredible. I mean, they’re shocking, of how many violent crimes are prevented because a gun was involved and the person was able to defend themselves.

AJ: Bad guys are scared away just when the victim shows the gun and proves to the bad guy that the victim isn’t the victim after all. And Mr. Heller sort of extrapolates this, and he says that the Jews in Europe had their weapons taken away and that made them easy prey. One of the things that I absolutely love about modern-day Israel is the military cemetery right there in Jerusalem, which shows that the Jews can and will defend themselves. Jerusalem is Jerusalem. The whole state of Israel is the hope of the Jewish people, and I just get really excited about it.

Nehemia: Amen. All right, let’s go on to the next episode. Actually, I want to talk about some of the support team studies. The support team studies are studies I put out as sort of a thank you to people who support my ministry. Guys, there’s over 200 hours of video and audio on my website for anybody who wants to access it. But for those who support the ministry, I put out these, sort of extra, studies in a little bit more depth. I did an episode called “The Mistake That Got It Right.” Part one of that came out in the previous year, part two this year. AJ, can you tell us something a little bit about that episode and what your thoughts were about that?

AJ: Yeah. “The Mistake That Got It Right” is really one of my favorite support team studies, because you talked about how the vowels, which are so very rare in the name, in the tetragrammaton, their occurrence in the manuscripts are so very rare, but they are put in mistakenly by the scribes. And how, once the name is written, it cannot be erased. And I was really excited by that, that once the name is put down on the page, it can’t be erased. There are places where they would cut it out sometimes, but sometimes they would just leave it in. Even with these manuscripts that are very heavily edited and reviewed by the scribes that recorded them or wrote them down, when they would find the name, they couldn’t take it out. And so, we know for a fact that, even if they didn’t want it to be there, their mistake gets it right.

Nehemia: Well, and I should tell people that I have an update on that, something I discovered over the summer. And that’s going to be “The Mistake That Got It Right: Part Three.” What that update shows is, something I said there, based on the information I had at the time, turns out not to be correct. But it actually confirms the conclusions even more solidly. It’s actually beyond what I expected. But that’s going to have to wait for the future.

I did an episode called “Pesach: Feast of Protection.” And I talked about, in the support team study, the actual meaning of the word that we translate as “Passover.” And what was interesting is, I have this really good friend who is a Southern Baptist Torah-keeping church planter. I met with him sometime this year and we had dinner, and he said, “My favorite episode you did was that Pesach: Feast of Protection, because I know you were talking about Yeshua.” And I said, “What?” And I didn’t even know what the connection was, and he was making these connections that show…I mean, I’ve got to have him on one time because that was pretty cool. I was just talking about Hebrew linguistics; really powerful stuff there.

I did an episode, “Cutting Through the Confusion with the Show-Me State,” with Keith Johnson. One of my favorite episodes I did was the “Great I Am Revealed.” That was actually a presentation I gave down in Houston, Texas. I shared there what was obvious to me, but after I was discussing it with people, I realized, “Okay, there’s some things in Hebrew that aren’t so obvious.” And in this particular case, it is the meaning of the name, “Yehovah.” You know, we talk a lot about the pronunciation, and I thought, “Why would I do a teaching on the meaning? It’s just so obvious.” But the meaning also points to some of the information about the pronunciation, which is so obvious to me I didn’t bother sharing it. But now I did, in the “Great I Am Revealed.”

I did an episode called “Original Sin and the Tree of Life,” a very important topic. And I want to read a quote from one of the people who listened to that episode. Layla wrote, “This is the first time I’ve heard about resurrection strictly from the Tanakh. I only knew it from the Brit Khadasha. I love it.” Guys, without you, we could not do this. So, look, you did this together with us. You supported what I’m doing and allowed me to hire editors, to hire producers, to be able to do this, to put this information out; to go and buy the manuscripts. This year, we actually purchased a manuscript which… I’m going to save that for a little bit later, but it was a manuscript that I’ve wanted to see for a long time, and I was only able to access it in black and white photos. And when I was able to see the color photos, I was able to read parts I couldn’t see. And it cost quite a bit of money. Some of these things are just online for free. Other things, you have to contact the library, get special permission, order digital photographs… This one particular set of manuscripts cost $2,500 for one set of manuscripts. That’s just how it is. And that’s New Testament manuscripts.

AJ: New Testament? You can’t drop that bomb on us and then let it go.

Nehemia: It was three manuscripts of the New Testament that were bound up together, and they were brought from India. They were found in a synagogue of Jews in India, indigenous Jews that have been there for 2,000 years. How they got there, nobody knows. And I heard about these, and I’d actually seen the black and white photos, but some of them are really hard to read. And in color, you could actually make out things you can’t see in black and white.

So, I got these and I’ve been studying them. And look, are they translated from European languages or the Hebrew originals? I mean, the likelihood is they are translated from European languages, but how did they get into a synagogue of Jews in India? I mean, that’s incredible. And what were they doing with these books? There are some questions here we don’t know the answer to. And maybe some of these are Hebrew originals. Nobody knows because nobody’s read these. Nobody seems to care. I tried to get scholars interested in these and it’s like, “Yeah, let’s just assume that that’s some late translation from Greek.” But even if it is a late translation from Greek, this is the Gospels and the different books of the New Testament, in Hebrew, that was translated by whom? By a Jew? I don’t know. I think they’re worth studying at the very least.

We couldn’t do this without you guys. I want to be able to share this information with you, and I just can’t do it if you don’t support my ministry. Some other episodes I put out, one episode is called “The Lying Pen of the Scribes of Jeremiah 8:8.” That’s a support team study that will come out very soon. “Canonization of the Tanakh” is a classic study I did that answers a really important question. One of the key claims of rabbinical Jews is, “Well, you have to obey us because we decided which books would be in the Bible.” And I actually go through the sources and see if that’s the case. Who are the Rabbis, the ones who decided which books would be in the Bible? I don’t think that’s supported by the evidence. Interestingly, some of the evidence comes from the New Testament itself, because you can see from the New Testament that there was a set Bible that all Jews accepted. So, I did an episode with a Professor from Oral Roberts University named Dr. Brad Young, called “Reading the New Testament Through Jewish Eyes.” And I’ve got to ask you, AJ, as a Methodist who keeps Torah, what were your thoughts about that episode?

AJ: I really enjoyed this episode. There are a lot of people in the Christian community who don’t understand the Jewish perspective of the New Testament. And they’re really shocked when we look back into the more recent reformers, folks like Martin Luther, who say very glowing, very good things, even though Luther was a great anti-Semite, who said very glowing things about the Hebrew language. He said, “Those who read in the Hebrew drink from the source. The Greeks…”

Nehemia: I’ve got to stop you. That’s one of the reasons I called my ministry “Makor Hebrew Foundation.” It was a verse from Jeremiah which talks about Yehovah being the source of the living waters. And then I saw Martin Luther, who started out as at least saying that he loved Jews, and it wasn’t until about 10 years later that he became this anti-Semite when he saw he couldn’t convert the Jews. Which is a topic worth discussing in its own right. But early on in his ministry he made this statement about “Those who read the Hebrew are reading from the source.” And I said, “This is what I want to do. I want to share with people the source of the information in the original languages.” So, go on with that quote.

AJ: So, “Those who read in the Hebrew drink from the source. Those who read in the Greek drink from the stream that flows from the source.”

Nehemia: Exactly.

AJ: “And those who read in the Latin drink from muddy puddles downstream.”

Nehemia: Right, from the downstream puddles. We quote that in my book, “A Prayer to Our Father” that I wrote with Keith Johnson. And this is what I want to do. I want to share with people the source. And people say, “I don’t know Hebrew.” Okay, well, do the best you can. And I’ll share with you what I know, and other people will share with you what they know.

And I did another episode this year called “Understanding the Difficult Words of Yeshua” with Dr. Roy Blizzard, who is another pioneer in this area of looking at the Hebrew sources of Yeshua. Let’s talk about these two episodes together, one with Dr. Brad Young and the one with Dr. Roy Blizzard. What were some of your impressions from that episode?

AJ: It was exciting to see a Christian like Dr. Young going through and studying the Hebrew sources. And he was dealing with a lot of negativity, a lot of pushback from the Christian community because the Christians have this crazy idea that they don’t need to read the Old Testament, that they don’t need to understand the Hebrew, that they don’t need to understand the culture in which Yeshua taught. And Dr. Young brought some really incredible insights on why they did.

Nehemia: And it was really refreshing for me to hear this from a Professor at Oral Roberts University where I wouldn’t have expected that, but that just goes to show my expectations aren’t always right. This other episode I did with…

AJ: Dr. Blizzard, yes.

Nehemia: … Dr. Roy Blizzard. One of the things he told me after the recording… And Dr. Roy Blizzard is this incredible scholar who’s really one of the pioneers of uncovering the Hebrew background of what Yeshua taught. Dr. Blizzard, he told me that he would go on Christian television decades ago. Now, it’s commonplace, right? You’ll hear even mainstream Christian Pastors bringing Hebrew concepts. I mean, you can hear Joel Osteen bringing Hebrew concepts, and Hebrew ideas, and Old Testament ideas that you maybe wouldn’t have heard decades ago.

But Roy Blizzard would go on Christian television, and he would say just very vanilla statements, things that shouldn’t be controversial, like, “Jesus was a Jew, and if you want to understand Him, you have to understand His Jewish context.” And he would literally get death threats from devout Christians who would feel deeply offended that he was saying this insulting thing, that Jesus was a Jew and we should understand Judaism. And now it’s not controversial, it’s just kind of a fact that everyone accepts. Well, maybe not everyone, but we’re working on it.

AJ: One of the great insights that Dr. Blizzard shared was about Yeshua’s statement about if your eye is bright… You know, your eye is the light of your body, and if your eye is bright, then that light fills you, and if your eye is dark, how great is that darkness. And it’s an idiom; it’s a Hebraism that we don’t understand in English. And Dr. Blizzard explained it by saying that when you give with a good eye, with a bright eye, with a good eye, that you give with a smile on your face, that you’re happy to give, that there’s light in your eyes. But when you give with a dark eye, that you give with a frown on your face, a scowl. You don’t want to be involved in whatever good thing you’re doing. And it really changes the whole meaning of what Yeshua was saying. I’ve heard Pastors give really terrible explanations about this being “vision-related,” or something like that. And what it really means is doing things with a lev shalem, a whole heart.

Nehemia: You know, what’s important and useful for me is, I read Dr. Blizzard’s book years ago, and it helped lay out for me what some of the issues are, because here’s an example where I wouldn’t even have known this was a question. I would read this in the Gospel, and think, “Okay, I know exactly what he’s talking about because I speak Hebrew and I come from a Hebrew culture.” I wouldn’t even know that Christians have a question about this. And I’m reading through his book and realizing, “Okay, these are some of the types of issues that I could communicate to people about.” Because what would happen is, people would come to me and ask me these questions. And I’d realize, “Wow, they don’t know anything about the Hebrew background of Yeshua.” And even what they think they know is usually wrong, or often wrong, in many instances.

And often, what I would encounter is, people would talk to me about what they thought was ancient Judaism and really, these were medieval practices, sometimes modern practices. And they were reading this back into the Gospel, something that’s done today in the 21st century. And that actually brings us to another episode that I did, a two-parter that I did with Professor Shaye Cohen of Harvard University. We did a two-part episode, “The First Christian Passover” and “An Early Christian Passover.” In “The First Christian Passover,” we talked about whether Yeshua’s Last Supper was a Passover Seder. And really, that goes to the question, is there such a thing as a Passover Seder in the 1st century? Today there is, obviously, but was there in the 1st century? And the other issue we talked about in “An Early Christian Passover” was Melito of Sardis, who was an early Christian in the late 2nd century, who has this text which has been interpreted as a Passover Seder by some scholars, and it was worth looking at. So, talk to us a little bit about those two episodes. What were your thoughts on those?

AJ: One of the things that I really found interesting was Professor Cohen’s discussion of how the Passover had evolved over time, how we had added things to it.

Nehemia: What was interesting about this episode is there’s all kinds of things that people today in the Hebrew Roots movement will read symbolic meaning into, and these are things that go back to maybe the 13th century.

AJ: The afikomen.

Nehemia: The afikomen’s mentioned in the Mishnah. But the accepted scholarly opinion, which could be wrong, of course, but it seems like the accepted scholarly opinion is that afikomen in the Mishnah just meant “desert.” And you go back to eat because afikomen is “the one who returns,” “afikomenos.” That you’d go back and you’d eat a little bit more after you’re done with the main meal. And in the Middle Ages, this tradition developed of, you hide the afikomen and there are three different matzas. And then, modern Christians and Hebrews Roots people said, “Oh, that’s the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” I’m pretty sure that’s not what it meant in the 13th century rabbinical Judaism, but it’s possible that there were Jews who believed in Yeshua and had this practice. That’s possible.

But in any event, as far as we know, it doesn’t go back that far. We take these things for granted today. And what it’s worth looking at is, okay, let’s figure out what existed in ancient times and what was a development over time. I did an episode called “The Historical Pronunciation of Vav,” which is all about that, essentially.

You mentioned there was a theme throughout the year about the Holocaust, and I thought that was a little bit interesting when you said that because it wasn’t an intended theme. I think it’s just part of being Jewish, that this is a theme that’s ever-present in life. I mean, you might say, “It’s just 70 years ago. Get over it.” Well, I can’t get over it.

AJ: No, no.

Nehemia: My ancestors were rounded up and shot and pushed into ovens. My cousins and relatives. And one of the things I found out this year was actual people who I can know who their names were. And there was one particular family member, I found out that she was murdered on a specific date in a specific place by the Nazis. And I asked my mother about that, and she said, “Yeah, we never knew what happened to her. We just assumed she’d been killed.” And I found a book written shortly after the war that documented this event and mentioned her and her husband by name. This is just part of the Jewish experience.

I remember I was in Cambodia about five years ago. And Cambodia went through a similar experience where one in four people were murdered by the communists, by the Khmer Rouge. They tried to turn it into a Maoist utopia, and that Maoist utopia killed one in four people. That was their utopia. And you want to make everyone equal, have an equality of outcome. An equality of outcome means killing people, apparently, unfortunately. It was incredible to me, because I’d walk around and talk to people, and they just seemed so normal. Yet many of these people, most people I interacted with, either they or their parents had been in what were known as the “Killing Fields,” which went on for four years, these killing fields.

And it struck me, “Wow, this is what it must have been like being in Israel in the 1960s and ‘70s.” Or talking to any American Jew in the 1960s and 70s, because it’s 30, 40 years later, and we’re acting like everything’s normal. It’s not normal. This is not normal that you have a population where you have a large percentage of that population that survived genocide, and they saw horrific things that we can’t even imagine. And when we describe them, you still can’t fully comprehend it.

So, this is just part of Jewish life. I did an episode called “Nothing is Forgotten” with a fiction writer, a person who writes historical fiction. It was fascinating, because all of his historical fiction is based on actual events. And so, we got to talk about some of those events and the Holocaust and the Soviet Union. And I did a support team study. I’m going to get Dev on the line to talk about her thoughts about that because she told me that was her favorite episode, the support team study.

Another episode I did, which is really different than anything I normally do, and sometimes I do these unusual episodes, like, I did the episode with the Raëlians, who are the UFO religion. And I did this episode with a Sikh guy who wrote to me, and it turned out he followed the podcast, a person of the Sikh religion, and he’d been visiting Jerusalem and wanted to meet with me. And I met with him, and I’m like, “Okay, we’ve got to share your story, because what are you, a Sikh, doing in Jerusalem?” And I’m talking about a Sikh like the guys who wear the turbans, right? People think the guys who wear the turbans are Muslims. They’re not; they’re the Sikh religion. AJ, what were your thoughts about “Seeking God in Jerusalem?”

AJ: I really enjoyed that, and I identified with it quite a bit because I’m also a foreigner. I’m not Jewish, but Sathari Singh, the guest on that show, said, “We don’t believe in religions. We believe that all people are the children of God.”

Nehemia: Wow. Amen.

AJ: Amen, absolutely. We’re all made in His image. Mr. Singh said he prayed at the Kotel.

Nehemia: A Sikh praying at the Kotel, the Western Wall.

AJ: Right, isn’t that awesome?

Nehemia: That’s very cool.

AJ: When I was in Jerusalem… I was blessed with a trip to Jerusalem early this year. I also went to the Kotel, and I was there for about 45 minutes. I was obviously not Jewish. Nobody would look at me and think that I was Jewish. I wasn’t even wearing a kippah. I was wearing an American ballcap, a green ballcap with an American flag on the on the front. And as long as my head was covered, everybody was fine. But nobody even looked at me. Nobody wondered why I was there. Nobody suggested that I didn’t have a right to pray here. And I really identified with Mr. Singh in that, while I was at the Kotel, I was also welcome there.

Nehemia: It’s a very welcoming place, and you compare that to what Mr. Singh compared it to, which was the Temple Mount. He was afraid to go as a Sikh. He’s not Jewish, he’s not Christian. He’s a Sikh, an American-citizen Sikh, and the Muslims hate Sikhs. And he had people harassing him in Jerusalem. Not Jews. I was with him. I walked down the train tracks in Baka with him, and a lot of the kids stopped me and said, “Is he a soldier?” Because there are a lot of Sikhs who are very prominent in the Indian military, and Israel’s definitely a country that respects the military, especially officers. So, they’re like, “Is he some kind of general?” I’m like, “No. He’s a train operator from New York.”

Okay, I did an episode called “When is the Shmitta?” Which some people think is controversial. I don’t think it was. I did a follow-up episode, which probably will be controversial, and that’s an episode I did with Joe Dumond, who’s a man from the Hebrew Roots movement. And guys, when I use the term “Hebrew Roots movement,” I mean, by my definition, anybody who believes in Yeshua and keeps the Torah. Most people in the Hebrew Roots movement would not consider themselves Hebrew Roots, including you, AJ. Oh, this we’ve got to talk about; “Hebrew Gospels from the Vatican Junk Box.”

AJ: There we go, yes.

Nehemia: Which, in a way, AJ, that was a follow-up to the episode that I’d done with you and T-Bone, which was talking about the manuscript of Revelation. We did two episodes about that. This was actually a program I did with Michael Rood, which we then rebroadcast on Hebrew Voices. Talk to me about this series I did about these documents from the Vatican junk box.

AJ: The tragic event is that the Christians raided these synagogues. They did these horrible things throughout Christian history to the Jewish people. They would go in and they would take their documents. They would burn a lot of them, they would take some of them as almost, even, war booty or spoils of conquest, or something. And it breaks my heart to say this, because I identify with the Christian tradition. But in doing all of this, these pieces got preserved. And the Christians, who didn’t know what they were, just tossed them in a box in the Vatican, and said, “We’ll deal with these in a few hundred years when we figure out what they are.”

Nehemia: Guys, please go listen to these episodes and hear what I’m actually saying. I’m not saying this is what John wrote in the 1st century. I say very clearly in one of the episodes… I explain that these four pages that survived are copies of an earlier manuscript, and I can demonstrate that’s the case. Go watch the episode. I talk about that. I think there’s convincing evidence that these are copies of an earlier document that probably was raided from a synagogue. Maybe these pages themselves were raided from a synagogue. It is tragic that this happened, that the church confiscated these books, and usually they would burn them. But like you said, on occasion they would keep parts of them and take them as war booty and display them. And particularly here in the Vatican, they had these in their library. It was a sign of… They had all these Jewish books and books from all over the world that the Vatican pillaged.

You know, one of the places that they’re finding a lot of documents these days, and all kinds of documents, Tanakh, Talmud, all kinds of documents; they call this the “Italian Genizah.” But it’s not just Italy, it’s from these monasteries that have these old books. And when the old books would be damaged over time, they would want to reinforce the binding. Well, what do you use to reinforce the binding? You use parchment. What’s a good source of parchment? Jewish books that were burning. Remove a few pages from the books, cut out in the shape you need for your book, and you put that into the binding to reinforce the binding. And so, now they’re disassembling these books in the 21st century, and we can finally see these books that have been bound inside of Christian books, in Latin, mostly, and in other languages, and see them now for the first time, sometimes in a thousand years.

Now, we haven’t found New Testament fragments like that yet. That would be really cool if we did, and someone should be on the lookout for that. But we’ve found fragments of the Tanakh. We’ve found Talmud and all kinds of other books. And to the Christians, this was just raw material to be used to reinforce another book. So yeah, this went on for quite a number of centuries. But because of that, there are things that would not have otherwise… Well, I shouldn’t say they would not have survived, because maybe they would have survived completely intact instead of just part of a page that’s been cut up for re-use. Right? I guess we don’t know.

I did another episode; this was an interesting one. It’s called “The Yellow Deli 12 Tribe Communists.” This is a group of people who have communes all over the world and live in some form or another according to Torah. And I think it’s important to know that this group exists. First of all, because you’re going to encounter them. And a lot of the things that are written on the Internet about them and videos and things are hit pieces against them. And I don’t know whether the things in those pieces are accurate or not. I wanted to hear, from them, their perspective and hear what they had to say, because there’s been enough negative things said about them. And look, I don’t choose to live my life as a communist, because I don’t think that anybody should have that kind of authority over me. I don’t think you should give all that authority to government.

And a lot of the accusations against them, I think, go back to this issue of authority, that if you give authority in your life over someone, then…You know, Dr. Jordan Peterson has this great discussion about this. You know, people are often saying, “Communism has just never been done right. If instead of Stalin, we had a benevolent dictator…” And they don’t say that, but it’s what they mean. If it had been done right, then everything would have been okay. And Dr. Jordan Peterson points out, “No, that wouldn’t have worked. Eventually, someone like Stalin would have come and stabbed that benevolent dictator in the back and taken over the country. And there’s nothing anybody could have done about it because you’ve given all this authority to the government.”

In this case, they live within a community in which they’ve given a lot of authority over to, essentially, a volunteer government. So, they could leave at any time, but they’re living in this commune, in this context. But I wanted to hear why they’re living that way. I mean, the accusations of whatever are out there. I want to hear what’s the reason they’re living that way, you know, hear their perspective on it and then you decide for yourself how to evaluate that. I know that’s not right for me. I believe in freedom, not communism, but hey, to each their own. Guys, I did an episode called “Jewish, Finnish and Zionist,” in which I spoke to this man in Helsinki, Finland, who is a native Jew, who’s been living there for generations. He talked about what it’s like to be there, about this new form of anti-Semitism that is now a respectable form of anti-Semitism in Europe. AJ, what were your thoughts on that episode?

AJ: Just that it was tragic to hear that even 70 years after the Holocaust, there’s still anti-Semitism like that in Europe.

Nehemia: And it’s a renewed form, it’s a lot worse, in some ways, than it has been in the ‘60s and ‘70s because now it’s become respectable. As long as you put the word “Zionism” in there, you can openly be an anti-Semite.

AJ: Right, yeah. And I identify as a Christian Zionist. I believe that the Jews have every right to the land of Israel, that God gave them that land, and that they will remain there forever.

Nehemia: Amen.

AJ: I’ve read the end of the book, and the Jews win.

Nehemia: Amen. In the end, Yehovah wins and His people.

AJ: Amen.

Nehemia: Talk to me about Jewish Christian Debates in the Middle Ages. That was an episode I did with Professor Daniel Lasker of Ben Gurion University of Be’er Sheva. And that was a really interesting episode, because, when I was done with the episode, I thought, “Was this too cerebral for people? Is this too complicated?” You know, he talks about philosophy, and what he means by philosophy isn’t what you and I mean by philosophy, right? He has a technical academic definition of it. Did you feel that was an episode everybody can get something out of?

AJ: This was an episode that was really very hard for me to listen to as a Christian who loves Israel, because he keeps describing these horrible things that the Christians were doing to the Jews. The debates where the Jews either win the debate and get exiled, or lose the debate and get forced to convert, as if their identity as Jews isn’t sufficient. They’re not real humans unless they’re either Christian, or somewhere else. And that was just really painful to listen to. I kept wanting to grab my speakers and yell, “But that’s not the Christian thing to do. That’s not what Yeshua taught us to do.” Yeshua taught us to turn the other cheek, even to the ones who strike us. He prayed from His own cross for the ones who had nailed Him there. And His teaching was so powerful that Stephen, the first martyr of the church, when he was martyred in the Book of Acts also prayed, “Lord lay not this sin to their charge.” The Christians in these debates were taking vengeance on the Jews, because the Jews are somehow Christ killers or something like that.

Nehemia: Well, but part of it, actually, I think, came out of a place of, you could call it, “love.” In other words, there’s an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Basically, they had a carrot and stick approach, and they openly said this. In other words, the purpose of the church in doing this was, on the one hand, we’re going to persecute the Jews, literally torture them on some occasions, slaughter them from time to time. And the other hand, offer them to join the church and give them reasoned arguments that they can justify to themselves of why they can be part of this church. And, of course, the biggest reason is the force. You’re being tortured. You can be exiled, you can be robbed of all of your property and made destitute, and not just you but your family, starving to death.

So, part of the idea of the carrot and stick approach of the church, their thinking was, “If we physically torture a Jew for two or three days until he’s dead, and eventually, on his deathbed he confesses Christ, surely that’s better than him living a daily eternal conscious torment in hell,” which they believed in. In other words, they’d break people on the rack, which means they would tie them, literally, to this giant wheel and take iron bars and beat them until their bones were sticking out of their flesh, until their bones were pulp and they eventually died of shock. And they thought, “What you’re going through in hell for eternity as a Jew is going to be far worse than what we’re doing to you. So, this is an act of love. We’re actually doing the Jews a favor.” And that’s how they genuinely looked at it.

And my takeaway from that is, guys, don’t do me a favor. If you want to share with me what you have lovingly, okay, I’ll hear it. Most Jews probably don’t want to hear it, but I’m willing to hear it. But after that, you know what? Put it in the Father’s hands. How about doing that? How about putting it in the Father’s hands? The Father is the only one who converts people, not you and not me. He’s the only one who can convert anybody’s heart and anybody’s belief and faith. And we, of course, have to make our choices as well, but the Father is the only one who can actually change men’s hearts. And if you want to share information with people, I’m all about information, but please don’t do Jews any favors by trying to push this down our throats, because that’s not a favor.

AJ: So, when I talk to Jews today, I want to find the common ground. I’m not interested in fighting with Jews. I love the Jews. I love Israel. I love the Hebrew language. And I love everything about that culture, because the way I define myself as a Christian finds its roots in Hebrew culture, in Judaism, in the Torah. I consider myself fortunate to be able to worship the God of Israel. My ancestors were Scottish and Irish; they were pagans. They would worship rocks, and trees, or whatever, but because of Rabbi Yeshua I know there is a God in Israel. And I know that because there is a God in Israel, because there is one true and living God, there is hope, and forgiveness, and love, and peace, even for descendants of pagans like myself.

So, to see people use the name and reputation of Rabbi Yeshua to hurt others breaks my heart. Really, I feel deep pain over it. It makes me want to look more closely at the things that I’m doing and saying in my own ministry, and in my own life, and ask, “Am I just as guilty? Am I doing something worse? Am I perpetuating this horrible thing? Have I dealt with the plank in my own eye, since I’m already so worked up about the speck in my brother’s eye?”

Nehemia: Here’s a great quote from Nachmanides, who was forced to debate with Pablo Christiani in 1263 in Barcelona. It’s the famous Barcelona disputation. They made a movie about it called “The Disputation,” a very interesting movie. He says, “When the lion invites the mouse to a disputation, your Majesty…” He’s saying this to King James I of Aragon. Nachmanides explained, “Look, I don’t want to participate in this debate.” And the King said, “What, are you afraid of debates?” He’s like, “No, I’ve debated my whole life. This is what Rabbis do.” He says, “When the lion invites the mouse to a disputation, your Majesty, the mouse, however fond he may be of arguing, would do well to avoid the disputation if he can, for the poor mouse does not know which to fear most, losing the argument, or winning it.”

And the point of Nachmanides is, there was a power differential. That’s what they would call it in modern, intersectional terms. I’m sorry for using terminology. But there’s a power differential between Nachmanides and Pablo Christiani, because Pablo Christiani has the power of the State and the power of the Dominican Friars behind him, and Nachmanides has no earthly power behind him. And so, he is being forced into this disputation. And people might say, “Well, that’s not true anymore because now Jews have full rights in the United States.” But hey, look at anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is the number one hate crime in the United States. You can look it up, guys, far more than that other group that experiences hate crimes. But it’s disproportionate, even though we don’t hear about it. We hear about certain phobias, but Jews are the ones who are the subject of hate crimes. In the United States we recently had a tragic shooting in the synagogue in Pennsylvania. And so, even today, Jews are persecuted. Maybe not by the government, though there are plenty of governments who persecute us.

You know, when I was a child, I had this experience. Maybe it’s a long story; I’ll just tell a short version of it. My father told me there was a certain incident that happened. I’m sure I’ve told this story before. I don’t want to tell the whole story, but he told me, “There are Jews who are persecuted today. And somebody might see what you do today, where you are in whatever country you are, and persecute a Jew in another country where they have power over them. And you have to be conscious of that constantly, in how you interact with other people.” And look, that is a consideration. You could pretend it’s not, and it’s easy when you’re in a position of power, when you’re a majority in a country to say, “Hey, why can’t we just discuss these things?” That’s an easy position to have when you’re in a position of power. But when you have Jews who are not in positions of power throughout the world…The United States is different in some ways, but even in the United States there are hate crimes. You have to be constantly aware of that.

This message, I think, is a really important message. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode with this Professor. Also, because he had a fascinating statement that just really intrigued me, which inspired the whole thing. He had written this paper, and he wrote that Christians are incapable of defining who they are and what they are without reference to Judaism, whether it’s in a positive way or a negative way. They have to do something with Judaism; they have no choice. Whereas Jews do not need to make any reference to Christianity in order to define themselves. I guess Daniel Boyarin wouldn’t agree with that, but that definitely is true in my experience. Especially speaking with most Jews, if you ask them, “How do you explain Jesus?” They’ll have never even thought of it. They literally have never thought of it, whereas Christians definitely have to explain, “Okay, the Jewish people, who are they? What are they? How do we deal with them? They’re cursed by God; they’re blessed by God. They’re still chosen. We’re now chosen in place of them.” Somehow, Christianity has to deal with Judaism and the Jewish people.

Okay, another episode I did was, I did an episode about the etrog, that’s the citron, a really interesting episode with a young scholar who recently got his PhD. One of the things he wrote about is the etrog, and it’s very interesting. This is the citron. It has to do with the history of Sukkot. So, if you love the Festival of Sukkot,go listen to the etrog episode. Guys, we’re coming to the end here. We’ve got some other wonderful episodes. I did an episode about “Fake Dead Sea Scrolls” and an episode about “The Origins of Yahweh.” “Yeshua the Jewish Theologian,” which was part two with Professor Brad Young. Guys, you need to go listen to these episodes. Go listen to the support team studies. There’s some really great stuff that we did this year. I was shocked at how much we had done this year. AJ, would you end this session that we’ve done, this conversation we’ve had, with a prayer?

AJ: Blessed Yehovah, we thank You for this opportunity to gather, to share Your word, to study Your Scriptures, to fellowship. To look back on the wonderful things that Makor has done, and the wonderful things that Makor is doing. Father, I ask You to continue to bless Nehemia, to bless his ministry, and to bless those who listen to his podcast and read his books. That Your name, that the Torah would truly go forth from Jerusalem, that Your name would be the light of salvation to the whole world. That all the ends of the earth would come to Jerusalem to praise Your holy name in which we do pray. Amen.

Nehemia: Amen. Wow, what a beautiful prayer. Thank you. All right, I’m looking forward to what we’ll do next year. Shalom.

AJ: Shalom.

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