Hebrew Gospel Pearls #20 – Mark of the Beast

You are listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: And Yeshua, therefore, is saying something profoundly revolutionary. He’s saying, “Rejoice and be happy when they persecute you.”

Keith: You’re in verse 12 already? We can’t get out of verse 11. What are you doing?

Nehemia: We’re still in 10, actually.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, episode number 20. We’re going to start here in Matthew chapter 5 verse 10, towards the end of the Beatitudes. I’m not sure how far we’ll get, so this may go into episode 21, but we’re going to start in verse 10…

Keith: Just a second.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Folks, he just reminded me of something, as we’re here. We’re talking, and I said it’s episode 20, and he looked over and he said, “That means we’ve done 40.” He said, “40 days and 40 nights.” I thought to myself, “That means…” Listen, can I say this?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: We’ve done 40 of these episodes. Twenty of them are public, 20 of them are Plus. We find people that are in the Plus saying, “Wait a minute.” Some of them have actually missed the public, is that right?

Nehemia: Some of them said, “Well, I’m going to go straight to the Plus episode…” No, no, no. You’ve got to watch both.

Keith: You’ve got to watch both. Now, here’s what’s going to happen, you guys. In episode 19, Nehemia gets in the zone. And if you didn’t watch 19, you’ve got to watch it. He gets in the zone, and it’s almost impossible to stop him, and I don’t want to stop him. But I’ll tell you right now, he’s already saying it could be two episodes. It’s definitely going to be two episodes because, before we get started, I’m going to have him answer a question.

Nehemia: What’s that?

Keith: From Howard.

Nehemia: Yes.

Keith: We are looking at verse 10. This is a question from Howard.

Nehemia: What does he ask?

Keith: Howard says this. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And I will tell you, Nehemia, a real quick little thing. So, I looked at this before. I actually called you and we talked about it a couple of years ago. So, now that we’re going, I said to him earlier, “We’re doing double-dipping,” we actually looked at this before, but I think we’ve come to even something more important. So would you do us a favor and say, is Howard’s translation correct from your perspective?

Nehemia: There’s an old saying that the translator is a traitor.

Keith: Oh, I love this.

Nehemia: The idea is that whenever you translate something, you have to make compromises and decisions. People have this idea – and we talked about this in a previous episode, with what happened with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – that not everything in one language translates directly into another language.

So what he’s doing there is, honestly, he’s being influenced by the Greek to some extent, and he’s using the word “persecuted”, which isn’t wrong, because what does persecuted mean? Primarily, originally it means “someone who is pursued”, they’re being chased after. And here the Hebrew word is, “Blessed are hanirdafim,” “Those who are pursued, those who are chased after,” “le’tzeked,” “because of righteousness, or for righteousness,” “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Keith: Now, stop one second.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Just before he goes now, because what I’m telling you, once he starts, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get in. When Howard did the previous verse, episode 19, what word did he use in 19, and is it the same root word…?

Nehemia: In verse 9.

Keith: …verse 9, is it the same? This is what I’m asking.

Nehemia: So, here is where there is what we call a word pun, or a play on words in Hebrew. It’s also the principle of association – when you have one word and then you have another statement with another word, you string those sentences together, even if they’re not necessarily related. So in verse 9 we had, “Blessed are those who chase after peace, for they will be called The Sons of God.” And verse 10, “Blessed are those who are chased after…”

Keith: Now?

Nehemia: “…for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So, the word is “rodfei” in verse 9, “hanirdafim” in verse 10 from the same root, “radaf”, “to chase after”. And the idea is that when you’re hearing this, you can remember it better because you’re like, “Okay, this word has another word related to it.” You see that a lot of times in the Prophets, where there’s a series of prophecies, and you’re like, “Why did this prophesy come after the previous one?” You especially see that in the Hebrew. In the English, you have these big chapters. In Hebrew, you look at the Hebrew text, and especially in the manuscripts, and you’ll see a space, like a chapter in Isaiah might be four different prophesies, or five different prophesies. Sometimes they’re related, sometimes they’re not.

Sometimes, the only thing that is related between them is a common word. One prophesy ends with a certain word, the next one also has that same word at the beginning, and so they’re being strung together by this principle of association. And that seems to be what’s going on. He’s giving this sermon to these people, it’s oral, they don’t have a pen and paper to write it down, they’ve got to memorize it, they’ve got to remember it. So he uses this word that’s in common, “rodfei shalom”, “those who pursue peace”. “hanirdafim le’tzedek”, “those who are pursued”, that is persecuted because of righteousness.

Keith: That’s why I wanted to bring this up to get us started. The reason is, Nehemia, and I said double dip, because when I was looking at this some years ago, when I was looking at Howard’s Hebrew, it jumped off the page. When I looked at Howard’s translation, there was a disconnect.

Nehemia: So you lose the connection between 9 and 10 in English, is what you’re saying, yeah.

Keith: And that’s the word I’m trying to get to folks, is the word “to pursue peace”, to be pursued because of. To me, when I’m looking at the left-side of Howard’s book – boom. On the right side, it isn’t. And this is what the beauty is of having us do this with these manuscripts also. So the question is; is there anything that you see different in terms of the manuscripts regarding 9 and 10?

Nehemia: So, here we have… I mean, do you want me to talk about 10?

Keith: Yeah, yeah, 10.

Nehemia: So, in 10 we have 20 manuscripts, and all of these manuscripts are virtually identical. There is one interesting thing in the Breslau Manuscript…

Keith: I love the Breslau Manuscript

Nehemia: Tell us the story of the Breslau Manuscript. No, you’ve got to tell it.

Keith: I’m just telling you. I mean, this is one of these…

Nehemia: You’ve preached on it. I know you have.

Keith: This is one of these things, folks. But I have to be honest, Nehemia. We’re here, live. Live meaning we’re being taped right now. I realized something this morning. I have forgotten more things than most people have ever even experienced regarding this. But here’s what I love about you, and I want to say this right here. What I love about you is, every time we bring up something, you can’t only tell the story, you can tell the specifics of the story. Then my brain goes, “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

Nehemia: All right, so I’ll remind you of the story, is that during the Holocaust Hitler wanted to create a museum, the museum of the extinct race. He wanted to wipe out the Jews, make the Jews extinct, and he wanted future generations of Germans to see… just like you have the museum of the dinosaurs that are now extinct, and you appreciate, maybe you don’t want to be around a Tyrannosaurus Rex because it’ll eat you, but you get to understand what it was like to have dinosaurs, to some extent.

And the same thing with Jews. The Germans hated the Jews, they didn’t want to be around them, the Nazis. And so Hitler wanted to wipe out the Jews, make them extinct, and show future generations, “This is the evil race that we made extinct,” from his perspective. And so, to this day, the largest collection of Jewish artifacts in the world…

Keith: Come on.

Nehemia: …is at the Jewish Museum of Prague. And part of that was collecting manuscripts on Kristallnacht in 1938. They burned the premier, the number one Jewish seminary in the world. It was called the Jewish Theological Seminary, the JTS of Breslau. And they burned it, and hundreds of manuscripts were destroyed, but others were taken out, and one of them ended up in Prague, and that is the Breslau Manuscript. When I studied it, it was still at Prague. Now, it’s actually been returned to Breslau, which today is pronounced a little bit differently. In Russian, it’s something like “Vreslov”, or sorry, in Poland. I can’t pronounce Polish, but it’s now returned after decades, finally, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it eventually returned to the University of Breslov, not the Jewish Theological Seminary, that’s gone. But the University of Breslov now has that manuscript.

And in that manuscript, as we’re going to see in a second, it has something that isn’t really different, but it is, in a way, different. Give me a second here, and I’ll show it to you.

Keith: While he’s looking for this, folks, just in case you didn’t understand, because when we say manuscripts, people are saying, “Is he talking about the Tanakh?” He’s talking about a version of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew that is in this library. It’s from this library.

Nehemia: Howard identified nine manuscripts of Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. I identified another 19, altogether 28. Twenty of those manuscripts preserve the section that we’re talking about. One of those manuscripts is the Breslau Manuscript. And I’m looking now for that section, and there, according to my notes at least, we have a correction. And what’s the correction? If I’m reading this correctly, in my correction… That’s always one of the challenges.

You know, when I transcribe these manuscripts, I usually go over it three times. The first time, I’m typing it. The second time, I’m checking to make sure I typed it correctly, and making any corrections, and the third time, I have to go over it, because I need to go over it an entire time where there’s no corrections, meaning, where I haven’t found any errors. And if I don’t find it a third time, I go a fourth, and a fifth, until I find it error-free.

And you have to do that, because we’re only human, and humans make mistakes, and when you’re trying to transcribe the manuscripts perfectly, it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to make a mistake, so you do the best. You go over it time and time again, and time again. Not too long ago, that was impossible.

What used to happen in the old days is we’d go to a certain library, I’d have a notebook, and I’d write down with pencil in my notebook what I saw, and then, I got back to my university somewhere across the sea, and I had different notes from different manuscripts, and I would compare my notes. And if there was a mistake in my notes, you’re done. There’s nothing you can do. There’s absolutely nothing you could do. I’m not going back across the sea to check that manuscript.

Well today, if I have a photo on my computer, I can check it 10 times. Of course, it takes time, it’s a lot of work, but it’s feasible to do that.

So, in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, this is section 13, and we’ll find out if I’m right here, I might actually be wrong. I don’t know.

Keith: This is happening right now.

Nehemia: We’re doing this in real time.

Keith: This is happening right now.

Nehemia: I checked this before and I thought I’d gotten rid of all the mistakes. Oh, no. I’m right, beautiful. I love when I’m right.

Keith: Can we do something before you read it?

Nehemia: What’s that?

Keith: We’ll be able to put this up on the screen so people can see. You’re actually looking at the Breslau Manuscript of Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and you’re reading it.

Nehemia: So, here we have, it says on the right there, perek Yud-Gimmel, chapter 13, from that chapter 13, here it’s four lines from the bottom of the page. It says, “Ashrei hanirdafim letzedek,” “Blessed are those who are pursued, or chased, because of righteousness,” “shelahem malkhut,” “because of them is the kingdom.” “For theirs is the kingdom.” What kingdom?

And then, there’s this little symbol here, it’s like three dots or something, and those three dots refer you to the right margin. And on the right margin, you have the word “shamayim”, “of heaven”. So, the original copyist of this copy of Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew left out the word “heaven”. A later proofreader with different handwriting came along and realized there’s a word missing here. And he put in the missing word in the right margin.

Keith: Wait, just a second. I’m going to stop you right now. So here we go. We’re going to start this, and Nehemia’s got notes, and notes, and notes, all these things he wants to cover. He gives me a few minutes to ask one question. So, I’m asking about this particular word. He says, “Oh, let me just check here. Is there anything different in the manuscripts? Oh, it happens to be this one here, the Breslau Manuscript. What’s Breslau?” Keith can’t remember. Nehemia tells the story. He has it on his computer. I want to tell a story about this computer, and I want to do it right now!

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: I’m with Nehemia, this is a true story now, folks. I’m with Nehemia at the International Bible Society, what do you call it?

Nehemia: The Society of Biblical Literature.

Keith: Society of Biblical Literature. I want to tell you folks what it’s like for me to be with this guy. So, it’s in Boston and he says, “Keith, you’ve got to come here.” So we go to the Society of Biblical Literature together, and we’re in the Masoretic section where we’re going to these different workshops. Some of the top scholars in the world are at this conference. And so, he’s doing some things…

Nehemia: And you have to understand, for me it’s like, I’m not into sports, I’m not really into celebrities, and everything. These are my celebrities. What do I mean by “these are my celebrities”? From the time I’m doing my undergrad, I’m assigned, “Okay, go read that journal article by this professor. Go read that journal article by that professor. Go read this book by this other professor.” And then you go and you’re standing in the room, and they’re all there.

Keith: And they’re all there.

Nehemia: And they’re lecturing. You could ask them questions and talk to them.

Keith: Listen, folks. I don’t want to overstate this, and I don’t want to understate it. So I’m there and I’m looking and I’m seeing the Emmanuel Tovs… and these people are all there. These are the superstars. But Nehemia’s the superstar for me, and I’ll tell you why. We’re going from place to place, but he’s always got his little computer, folks, and this computer is stacked. So we go into a workshop and I’m going to let you tell the story better than me. But I was there, I witnessed it with my own eyes. We’re in a workshop, and they’re all there. They’re coming to listen to this guy, this top scholar. And he gets up in front of his computer, and he’s about to do his thing and uh-oh. Uh-oh. Say, “Uh-oh.”

Nehemia: Uh-oh.

Keith: He doesn’t have the information on his computer. He can’t get it off his computer.

Nehemia: Well, no. Actually, what happened is this…

Keith: You see what I mean?

Nehemia: …this professor flew in from Germany, all the way from Germany to Boston, and he came for the sole purpose of giving this… I’m sure for other reasons, but mainly to give…

Keith: But this was the big deal.

Nehemia: The peak of his trip is to give his lecture to this room full of great scholars. And he goes to turn on his computer, and it won’t turn on. And he gets up, and you could see he’s flustered. He’s embarrassed.

Keith: They’re working with the people.

Nehemia: Yeah, they’re working.

Keith: Now, can I tell this part?

Nehemia: There’s all this noise going on, while the other person’s lecturing, because they’re trying to figure out, “How can we get this computer to start?” And finally, the time has come, and it won’t turn on, where he’s got his PowerPoint. He can’t pull it up.

Keith: I’ve had this happen before. But then, he gets up and he says, “I wanted to show you something. However, unfortunately, my computer won’t work. I just don’t have access to this particular thing.” What happens?

Nehemia: I raised my hand. I said, “I have it right here.” He said, “No, you couldn’t have that. It’s a manuscript that’s not online. It hasn’t been digitized.” I’m like, “I got it.” He’s like, “How could you have it?” I said, “I have it,” and I walk up, stick it in one of the computers there. And he was like, “All right, I can give my lecture now.”

Keith: The guy gives a lecture… part two of the story. I’m going to be sensitive. Part two of the story. A couple of weeks ago, there’s a workshop. Nehemia’s giving the workshop. I’m running, I’m going to go and watch this workshop. Why? Because this is my superstar, this is my scholar. This is the guy that I… look 20 years ago, Nehemia Gordon. That’s why I say, “Nehemia Gordon, from the Hebrew University.” This guy is a walking encyclopedia.

So there’s a workshop. I run to the workshop, it’s a course on Zoom. I click it, and there’s all these people from around the world, they’re listening to Nehemia, and before the workshop gets started, the guy that’s leading the whole workshop says, “I’d like to introduce to you, Nehemia Gordon. He’s actually famous for a number of reasons. The most famous reason for us is, he’s the guy who rescued…”

Nehemia: So-and-so, who didn’t have the manuscript. In that small community, I’m the guy who miraculously had the manuscript for the guy who came from Germany, who didn’t have it.

Keith: Folks, I wanted to say this. Listen, at this point, Nehemia…

Nehemia: My claim to fame.

Keith: …I’ve taken more time than I need to, but I thought it was important.

Nehemia: Oh, that’s fine.

Keith: Please would you now continue.

Nehemia: All right. Our time is rapidly running away from us. No, but it’s important.

Keith: It’s important.

Nehemia: Deuteronomy 16:20. It’s important to show that, okay, we’re looking at these manuscripts. Sometimes, they have mistakes in them, and in this case, it’s been proofread and the second scribe put it in the margin. This type of thing happens all the time. It happens in New Testament manuscripts, it happens in Tanakh manuscripts.

Keith: Greek, Hebrew.

Nehemia: It even happens in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew manuscripts.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Okay. Deuteronomy 16:20 is the verse I think we have to start with when we’re talking about “those who are pursued”, that is, persecuted, because of righteousness. And Deuteronomy 16:20 is kind of the flip side of that verse. It says as follows. It says, “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.” “Righteousness, you shall pursue righteousness.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: “Le’ma’an tikhyeh veyarashta et ha’aretz,” “In order that you will live and inherit the land, “asher Yehovah Eloheikha noten lakh,” “which Yehovah, your God, gives you.” And there, unequivocally, “the land” is the Land of Israel. We talked in a previous episode about how the word “land” could be ambiguous. Is it the Land of Israel? Is it the whole earth? Because in Hebrew, the word “earth” means both land and earth.

So here, it’s obviously the Land of Israel that God has given you. “But you shall pursue righteousness,” or “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue.” The NRSV has “justice, only justice, you shall pursue.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Righteousness, justice, it’s a similar word in Hebrew.

Keith: Give us that verse again, Nehemia?

Nehemia: Deuteronomy 16 verse 20.

Keith: Verse 20.

Nehemia: And I want to combine that verse with the verse we looked at in the previous episode, which is Psalm 34:15.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: And if we look at Psalm 34:15, we have this pair of verses. 34:15 has, “Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” And so these two verses, Psalm 34:15 and Deuteronomy 16:20, you could say, are the inspiration, are the cultural background of what Yeshua is saying up in the Sermon on the Mount in this passage. These are the verses that are spinning around in people’s heads, that they’d heard in the synagogue, that they’ve recited in prayers, in the Psalm, they heard the Levites sing in the Temple. These are the verses that they’re familiar with, and it’s on this background that he’s using this phrase, “Those who are pursued because of righteousness.”

Now, the question I ask myself… and here it’s kind of a problem to only look at verse 10. Here’s why I’m struggling a bit to only look at verse 10, because verses 11 and 12 have a continuation of the theme of persecution.

Keith: Can we peek at 11?

Nehemia: Can we peek at 11 and 12, is my request, okay?

Keith: Okay, yes.

Nehemia: So, 11 has, “Ashreikhem ka’asher yirdefu ve’yigadfu etkhem,” “Happy are you,” or “Blessed are you, when they chase and insult you,” “veyomru aleikhem kol ra ba’adi yekhasevu.” “And they say…” and I’m going to leave that part untranslated. We’ll get back to it maybe in the Plus. “All evil because of Me,” or, “concerning Me, and they lie.”

So we have people who are pursued because of righteousness, and then we have the people who are pursued because of me, meaning Yeshua in this context, presumably. And then verse 12, “Rejoice and be glad…” and this we’ll get back to for sure, “for your reward is very great in heaven, for so they pursued the prophets.”

So we have three references here to being pursued, that is persecuted. They’re chasing after, they’re pursuing for righteousness, they’re pursuing because of Yeshua, and they pursued the prophets. And those may all three be the same thing or three different things.

So I want to look at some incidents in the Tanakh about people being persecuted. And here’s why this is important. When I studied at Hebrew University, we had a class, we had a whole course, actually, and it was about persecution in ancient Jewish sources. And one of their premises was that persecution as a theme in Jewish literature doesn’t show up until after the Tanakh. That is, in Christianity, persecution is, of course, like the ultimate ideal. Jesus was persecuted on the cross, persecuted by Pilate, persecuted by the Jews, according to how some read it. His suffering and persecution is the central message, certainly, of Paul, and to some extent, of the Gospels, am I right?

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: Am I right? I think it was Billy Graham who said, “Christ came to earth to do three days’ work,” meaning, to be persecuted, be in the grave… That’s what he said, or somebody like that said it, I don’t remember who, exactly.

So it may not be the central theme necessarily of the Gospels, but each of the Gospels have that account, and it is important there, obviously. Obviously. And in the Tanakh, do we have a parallel to this? So, the argument is that persecution became an important motif in Christianity because of Jesus and then later, because of the early Christians who were persecuted by the Romans. They were executed, persecuted, suffered under the Romans.

And by the way, did you learn about this in seminary, about them suffering under the Romans? Do you know about this? I mean, you know it to some extent, right?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: But the story I was always told is they suffered under the Romans rather than deny Jesus. But it’s a little bit more nuanced than that. Many of the people who suffered under the Romans, it was because to be a citizen of the Roman Empire, to fulfill your civic duty, you had to participate in a sacrifice to the emperor as a god, and there was one group of people in the entire empire who were exempt from that, and that was the Jews.

And why were the Jews exempt? Because the Romans looked at the history and they said, “Okay, we’ve got this weird, exotic people. They’re peculiar. They have this obsession with only one god, it’s a god they can’t even see.” It was strange to the Romans, and they said, “We’ll give a special dispensation to Jews not to worship the emperor, as long as they bring a sacrifice in their Temple in Jerusalem to their God on behalf of the emperor.”

So the Jews had a special dispensation. And the early Christians, the early followers of Yeshua who were Jewish, had no problem, it was when these Gentiles started to become Christians and started to follow Yeshua, and the Romans said, “Well, you’re not Jewish. Did you participate in the sacrifice to the emperor? Where is your document?” And then there came a period in Roman history where you had to have a certificate, and some people say that’s what Revelation’s talking about, and certainly in the 2nd and 3rd century, that happened – if you wanted to buy or sell, if you wanted to go into the public square and participate in business, you had to be able to show, “I’m a good citizen,” “Where are your papers? You’re undocumented, where’s your documentation?”

Keith: Produce your papers.

Nehemia: Produce your papers. “Papier bitte,” where are your papers? And the paper would say, “On such and such a date, I offered the sacrifice to the Emperor Nero.” And if you couldn’t show those papers, you were an outlaw, you were outside the law. You weren’t a proper citizen of the Roman Empire. And as we get into the 3rd century, this becomes a huge problem. They start to actually enforce this. Originally, it was just like maybe the guild of a certain city made you show your papers. But by the 3rd century, it’s a universal thing that’s called the “libellus”. It’s where we get the word “libel.” The libellus originally was a certificate that showed that you had participated in the sacrifices. And it wasn’t because they professed belief in Jesus, it was because they refused to participate in an idolatrous sacrifice. That was the immediate reason, from the perspective of the Romans, that is.

From their perspective, obviously, if I participate in the sacrifice, I’m denying Jesus. But from the perspective of the Romans, it would be the equivalent of if you say, “Well, I’m not going to pay my taxes. I don’t believe in the IRS. I don’t believe in the Federal Reserve.” Okay, well the Federal Reserve believes in you, and so does the IRS, so, you’d better play ball.

And so these Christians were being persecuted. And this is revolutionary in human thought – persecution became an ideal. If you could say someone was persecuted, they reveled in it. And you have to understand, throughout most of human history, when people were persecuted, when people suffered at the hands of the government, at the hands of the powers that be, whoever they were, it was humiliating. And Christianity turned suffering into a noble thing.

Keith: A badge.

Nehemia: A badge of honor.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Now, it’s hard for people to understand this, because in 2021, when we’re recording this in America, if you can say you’ve suffered, then you’re a hero. They call it the Persecution Olympics. So whoever has suffered more is now higher up on the hierarchy. But throughout most of human history, it wasn’t like that. If you suffered, it was humiliating.

And I’ll tell you, I grew up around people who survived the Holocaust, and they told me something I didn’t fully understand early on. I was told by people that, “It’s only recently, we’ve started talking about the Holocaust.” Basically, what happened is, there was this shift in the 1960s and the biggest part of the shift was the Six Day War, but it happened even a little bit before that, where people started to talk about and say, “Yeah, we suffered. We were persecuted. Here’s what happened. We were part of this momentous event in history. It was a horrible event, but it was this pivotal momentous event, and I was part of that…” not me, but the people talking in this camp. “Here’s my number.” Before that, people would cover up their number. They were humiliated. Why were they humiliated? The Nazis did horrific things to them. I mean, I won’t even talk about, but they did…

Keith: In other words, you knew if you were in the Holocaust…

Nehemia: They did objectively horrific things to them, embarrassing things, humiliating things. And so people didn’t talk about it. But at some point, in the United States, the Oppression Olympics began to take hold. First, it wasn’t Olympics, right? Now, it really is. I mean, that’s what intersectionality is – it’s how many intersections of different oppressions do I have? It’s almost absurd. But it comes from Christianity.

It’s interesting, I heard this described once, that what atheists do is they pillage the religions of Western civilizations for ideals. They say, “That’s immoral, what you have in the Bible.” Well, how do you know it’s immoral? Because the Bible taught you that it’s immoral!

Based on humanism, you would never say that’s immoral. It’s been done throughout most of human history, let’s say slavery, for example. So long story short – if I can make it that way – what they would do is, throughout most of human history it was humiliating to be persecuted, and Christianity made into a noble thing.

In this course at Hebrew University, they asked the question, “Did Judaism have that concept?” And if you look in the Tanakh they argued, “You don’t have the concept of persecution as a noble thing. You definitely have it in the Books of the Maccabees, First and Second Maccabees, and then in other literature around that. You have a story about a woman named Hannah and her seven sons, who’s told she must convert to the pagan religion. Not really convert, she could continue to be a Jew as long as she participates in the sacrifices to Apollo and eat the pig. And if she won’t do that, then her seven sons will be slowly and viciously – one of them was, I think, skinned alive – killed in horrific ways in front of her. And then finally, she’s executed and she becomes a hero because of her persecution.

And so, we have to be careful when we read this verse and we live in the era of the Oppression Olympics, and we live in the period that’s after the period of Christian persecution, right? In other words, we’ve already lived through the period of the libellus, where Christians were being thrown to the lions, and dipped in pitch and lit on fire for the gladiator events in the Colosseum, and whatnot.

And so we have to look at this, not from the perspective of persecution is this noble, beautiful thing; it brings about martyrdom, and it’s essentially the most noble death you could have, right? In the period that this is being taught, persecution on some level is still seen as humiliating, and Yeshua therefore is saying something profoundly revolutionary. He’s saying, “Rejoice and be happy when they persecute you.”

Keith: Are you in verse 12 already? We can’t get out of verse 11. What are you doing?

Nehemia: We’re still in 10, actually. How are we doing on time?

Keith: It’s up to you. You’ve got a clock. Do we go to the Plus here? Do we keep going?

Nehemia: Let’s go a little bit more, and then we’ll jump to the Plus, and then in the future episodes, we’ll get to 11 and maybe even 12, hopefully. But when he says, “Blessed are those who are pursued, who are persecuted because of righteousness,” you can’t look at this from the lens of intersectionality and the Oppression Olympics, and you can’t even look at it through the lens of the 2nd and 3rd century persecution of the Christians, where according to certainly Catholicism and the Orthodox Church, you have the saints. The saints were the people who were burned alive at the stake, they were skinned alive, fed to the lions, and they became these noble martyrs.

When Yeshua’s speaking this to the audience, they know about Hannah and her seven sons, and they have this idea of suffering and dying for your faith, and I’m going to argue in the Plus section that this exists in the Tanakh, as well. But it doesn’t exist and it’s not as developed as it is in later Christianity. So in some respects what he’s saying here is profoundly revolutionary.

Keith: Wow, Nehemia. So, can we move…? I want to ask people to do something. I want to ask people to do something. For this public episode, I’m going to ask everybody that listens to this to share it. I’m going to ask everybody that listens to this, on Facebook, YouTube, wherever it is that you’re watching this, I really feel like what we just did for the public episode of episode 20…

Nehemia: 20, wow.

Keith: Huh?

Nehemia: Wow, 20. We’ve done that many, yeah.

Keith: I really want people to share this. I’ve never said that before, but I will tell you, I’m sitting here with you, Nehemia, and you see this smile on my face, like, “Come on. Give us some more.” And this is a profound thing.

Nehemia: This is a profound thing. And we need people to share it. We need people to go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts in the future, and give it a five-star review, or whatever the top review is in the future, or even now, and make this available to people. People don’t know about it. There are forces out there that are persecuting us, and it is very noble that we’re persecuted, but it’s still humiliating in some ways when you put out a video and you get shadow banned, because they don’t like what you’ve had to say. They don’t even give you the dignity of telling you that they’re persecuting you, they do it under the table.

Look, that’s happened to you, it’s happened to me, it’s happened to a lot of people who are saying things that aren’t part of the leftist narrative. And the only way to overcome that is to try and share it, to do what we can to get that message out and disseminate it.

Keith: Can I do something?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: We are going to go to 11, correct?

Nehemia: Yes.

Keith: We are going to go to 11. Can I give them a gift, folks?

Nehemia: Sure.

Keith: If you’d like to get just the background of what we talked about, you could go to the Red-Letter Series at the front of BFA International. That’s free. You can go in and at least get some of that information. I hope you’ll go to the Plus, because as we go to the Plus, I can just tell you from my conversation with Nehemia, this is getting better, and better, and better and better. Today, do we have a conversation, Nehemia?

Since last night, back and forth, back and forth, what are we going to do about 10, 11, and 12? There was this proposal, and that proposal. We decided we’re going to take our time. Can I say, “Take our time?”

Nehemia: Take our time.

Keith: So that’s what we’re going to do, Nehemia. I want you to invite them to the Plus for…

Nehemia: Guys, go over on nehemiaswall.com, is going to be HGP, Hebrew Gospel Pearls, Episode 20 Plus, and where we’re going and we’re going to look at this idea in the Tanakh of what Yeshua’s talking about. He didn’t invent a new thing. In some ways, it was revolutionary, but in some ways, he’s taking an idea that exists and maybe he’s emphasizing it in a way. We have to see what the core of that is in the Tanakh to really understand it.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Yehovah, Avinu Shebashamayim, Yehovah, our Father in heaven, thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to come here and share this information. Yehovah, I ask You to bless the production group who’ve allowed us to use this studio, and is producing this program, who’ve made it available to people through their incredible skills. And Father in heaven, I don’t want to be persecuted. I don’t want to be pursued. But if I am, give me the faith and the strength of Hannah and her seven sons, and of those others in the Tanakh who were able to say, “I’m willing to live by my faith, and if need be, for those who persecute me, to die for my faith.”

Keith: Father, thank you so much, and I mean this in such sincerity, Father, thank you so much for a walking relationship with Nehemia, where we’ve really tried to find commonality in Your word. And now, to be studying the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, there’s just so much depth here. We don’t want it to be stopped. We don’t want it to be delayed or denied. We want it to go forth and what a blessing for it to go forth from such a high-quality situation that we’re in now. We pray for the resource, we thank You for the vision and the provision. We thank You, Father, for those that are listening right now – touch their hearts and let them be people that are pursued for righteousness. In Your name, Amen.

Nehemia: Amen.

You have been listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has been a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the transcript has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If this teaching has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting Nehemia's research and teachings, so he can continue to empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!