Hebrew Gospel Pearls #21 – The Power of Prepositions

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Nehemia: Part of the persecution isn’t just to say, “You have to bring the sacrifice to the Roman emperor, deny Jesus.” There’s another aspect of the persecution, according to Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, is where they lie about Yeshua when they speak to you. They tell you things that he taught and that he said that he didn’t say.

Wow!f that’s not a pearl, I don’t know what is!

Keith: Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, episode 21 of the Biblical Beatitudes Buffet! We are having a blast, you all, and you are with us. We’re about to do something… I want to say, Nehemia, we’re actually at a place where we looked at verse 10 and 11 as a possibility. We looked at the possibility of 10 alone, we looked at the possibility of 11 and 12, we looked at 12 alone. And you said this morning there’s no way we can address it without two episodes.

So this episode within itself I’m calling it “The Buffet Bonus”. It’s a bonus episode, because we’re really going to be talking about 11 and 12, and let me tell you right now… Can I just say what’s happening here?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: You guys, we’re in this awesome studio, and there are like four cameras and three people and somebody in a control room, and in all of it, I’m so excited, I’m a little overwhelmed.

Nehemia: Can we tell them what we usually do?

Keith: Can you tell them what we usually do?

Nehemia: We actually have a checklist. We’re like pilots. We literally have a checklist of all these things, because we’re doing it ourselves, normally. I’m in, basically, a bedroom that I’ve turned into a studio in Dallas.

Keith: And I’m in a little office that I’ve turned into a studio.

Nehemia: Yeah, you’re in a little office-turned-studio in Charlotte. And I’ve got an iPhone up there, and I’ve got my Logitech webcam, and you’ve got your iPhone and your built-in camera of your laptop, and we have to make sure all the different devices are recording. We have a standalone audio, which sometimes we forget to hit record, and that’s why people sometimes are like, “Why is this such poor quality?” Because we didn’t do the checklist right, or we hit record and something happened, because we didn’t have somebody monitoring it.

We’re actually here in this amazing studio, The Production Group, in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s the same studio where Michael Rood records Shabbat Night Live. We’re so blessed that they’ve invited us to come in here – allowed us to come in here – and share this information. It’s a whole different level of professionalism. We’re really appreciative of these guys.

Keith: But I want to say what it allows us to do, and I’ll tell you what it allows me to do. I’m getting a little older… I made this confession to Nehemia at dinner the other day, he and Lynelle. We were sitting down, and I said, “Hey, there are times where we’re going through the checklist, and by the time it’s time to talk about what we’re supposed to talk about I’m already fried.” And instead, now I’ve got these guys saying, “Hey, you need a little of a buffer here, you need this larger sound.” And they’re taking care of everything!

Nehemia: And it really allows us to concentrate on the information rather than, “Is it recording, or did the battery die?”

Keith: “I got out of the frame.” Terry is saying, “Keith, you’re not in the spot where your belly button is supposed to be…” I’m enjoying this, folks. The reason we’re enjoying this is because you’re supporting us. And we are now in Episode 21. Nehemia, episode 21; that means that we, from the beginning of Hebrew Gospel Pearls, are now at the place where we will have done 21 times 2 is…?

Nehemia: 42.

Keith: Forty-two episodes; 21 of them are public, which means you can see them on YouTube. You can see them on Facebook. You can see them at nehemiaswall.com. You can see them at BFAinternational.com. You can go to your favorite podcast. Last time I checked, Nehemia, we have like 16 different podcast platforms. You can just click like this. So don’t give me any excuses about why you don’t know about Hebrew Gospel Pearls.

Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to the last episode of what I’ve been calling the Biblical Beatitudes series, but now it’s the Buffet. I’ve asked Nehemia to do something, and he, just before we turned on the cameras, did his thing. What’s his thing? The manuscripts. But let’s get started.

Nehemia: We probably won’t get to it until the Plus episode, but let’s start with verse 11. “Ashreikhem ka‘asher yirdefu viygadfu etkhem,” “Happy you are,” or, “may you be blessed when they pursue and insult you,” or it could be “blaspheme you,” but really, it’s “insult you”. “Veyomru alekhem kol ra ba’adi viykhazevu,” “and they will say ‘blank you’,” and I’m going to say the “blank” in a minute, what that is, “all evil because of me,” or “concerning me, and they lie.” Now, what’s the “blank” there?

Keith: Are we going to go right to the blank?

Nehemia: We’re going to go right to the blank, if you give me permission.

Keith: Okay, good. What do you want me to do?

Nehemia: Let’s go to Delitzsch.

Keith: Okay, excellent.

Nehemia: Delitzsch has…

Keith: Those who don’t know, who haven’t seen this yet, we’ve got a number of sources we’ve been using. We’ve been using the sources. Nehemia, can we really quickly tell them what the sources are? I know some of you are like, “Keith, don‘t keep repeating this.” Guess what I’ve learned over time? Do you know how many people this is their first time watching Hebrew Gospel Pearls? And Nehemia, we’ve got thousands of people around the world that are watching.

Nehemia: I think it’s more like tens of thousands.

Keith: Beseder, I’m trying to be low key.

Nehemia: Humble. Okay, so we use… Delitzsch was an expert of Biblical Hebrew, of Old Testament Hebrew, who translated the New Testament in the style of the Old Testament in the 19th century, and he intentionally took the Greek words and looked for what he thought the Hebrew equivalent would be in the style of the Tanakh, the Old Testament.

Keith: Second one…

Nehemia: The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament by Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik is a commentary on the gospel. It’s a cousin of mine who in the 19th century wrote the first known Jewish commentary on the New Testament. That was actually a commentary, not just an argument.

Keith: Okay, this is an important one. What about this one?

Nehemia: George Howard’s Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. He took nine of the manuscripts, he put the British Library in the main text, translated it, and then in the notes he put differences in other manuscripts. I’ve now looked at 28 manuscripts, this section has 20 manuscripts.

Keith: Excellent. Now, let me say something before we get started. We actually did something based on Howard’s translation, and it limited us severely. Nehemia came along in January of 2019, I think it was…

Nehemia: A few years ago, whenever it was.

Keith: And he said, “Hey, listen, let’s go ahead and get this vowel-pointed text.” I want you to tell them about the vowel-pointed text. If you open up Howard… here’s Howard’s page, one side is going to be an unpointed text of Hebrew, and then he’s going to have English. And oftentimes, say “oftentimes”.

Nehemia: Oftentimes.

Keith: I’ll be looking over here and seeing the Hebrew, and then I look at the translation and I get sick to my stomach. He’s a lot nicer about it. I get kind of mad, because I think Howard knows what he could do, and he still does this thing where he Howards-it in English.

Nehemia: He’s accused me of Howard-ing texts. He says, “Sometimes you’re pulling a Howard.”

Keith: And I stop him. Why can I stop him? Because he taught me how to read Hebrew.

Nehemia: So when the text was copied in the Middle Ages by Shem Tov Ibn Shaprut, who was a rabbi in 1380, and other rabbis who then copied his work, they just had the consonants, just the letters. And I thought a lot of the people who are studying this text maybe don’t know Hebrew at the level where they can read it without vowels. So I thought what a blessing it would be to people if we put the vowels in. In addition, when you put the vowels in, you’re also to some extent interpreting it. You’re explaining to people, “Okay, this is the word, this is how you can understand the word.” And then, of course, my long-term vision is that in the notes there’ll be alternative vowel readings.

Keith: That’s right.

Nehemia: And we’ve shared some of those – or we will soon – in upcoming episodes. So I think it brings it to a different level. If you look at many traditional Jewish texts – and I’m talking about outside the Tanakh – whether it’s the Mishnah, or the Kuzari, or the Shulkhan Arukh. Those were books that were originally written without vowel points, and people have put vowel points in them to make them more understandable even to the average Jew, who maybe reads Hebrew, but maybe has trouble with Hebrew from 1,000 years ago. And so, it makes it easier to read and easier to understand. That was the objective of putting vowels in it.

Keith: So here’s the other source we have, the Jewish Annotated New Testament. We also have been using that. I don’t have that book here, we’ve got it on our computers. Was there any other source?

Nehemia: A bunch of other sources.

Keith: A bunch of other sources. But let me just say this. Folks, we’re going to do this for you. And I want to look here and tell you this. People have been sending me notes, saying, “Why haven’t you been continuing the translation through the Biblical Beatitudes series?” Because it is evolving. It has evolved as we’ve gone through this information. So at the end of this episode, you will have access to the translation with vowel points, and English, etc. at the BFA side.

Now, what we haven’t done yet is what Nehemia just talked about. He’s been talking about this for years. Ultimately, long term, we’re going to have what we call a scientific version – eventually, at some point.

Nehemia: The term is “a critical edition”. The ultimate objective is to take all 28 manuscripts and present a text that… you don’t have to ever see a manuscript in your life, you could take the text we prepare and know what’s in all 28 manuscripts, and hopefully, if we do it right, have some idea of what existed in 1380 in the time of Shem Tov. In other words, you create what’s called a family tree, a stemma, and you can get back to… not the original, but what was in at least 1380.

Keith: I call that step 3. Step 1, we’re looking at Howard. Step 2, we’ve got the pointed texts. Step 3, we get that critical edition. So we’re at step two right now. You have availability to get that at BFAinternational.com. Become a free member, you get access to the translation. Nehemia, can we go to 11 and 12?

Nehemia: Well, let’s talk about 11. There was a word I didn’t translate in the last episode, and I haven’t translated it yet. It’s one of the simplest words in the Hebrew language, it’s a preposition. Prepositions are words like to, from, with, at. I have a joke about prepositions.

Keith: Really?

Nehemia: Can I tell my joke?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: In English there’s this principle – you never end a sentence in a preposition. Now, it’s not really true, you do. In spoken English you do, and if you don’t, you kind of sound like an idiot. But it’s a principle that actually comes from Latin. And so, the old joke is this person goes to Harvard, and he says, “Where’s the library at?” And the Harvard student who’s very learned and knowledgeable says, “One does not end a sentence in a preposition.” And he says, “Okay, where’s the library at, jerk?” It’s an old classic joke. And in the original it’s not “jerk”, but whatever.

So we have a preposition here, and the preposition in Greek, as translated by Delitzsch, is aleikhem– “and they will speak concerning you / on you / about you, falsehood,” all kinds of falsehood, ba’avuri – “because of me”.

Now, let’s look – this is Matthew 5:11. Let’s look at the Greek here. In the Greek it is, “And they will speak all manner of evil against you,” kath humon, which comes from kata. So it’s “against you they’re going to speak all manner of evil”.

And so Delitzsch faithfully translates the meaning of the Greek. The Hebrew of Shem Tov is something profoundly different, yet it’s a difference that if I read it to you, you couldn’t hear the difference. Let me read it to you. The Hebrew Matthew of Shem Tov has aleikhem, and Delitzsch, based on the Greek, has aleikhem. I just said the same word twice.

But here’s what people don’t know, because they can’t see my computer – in ancient Hebrew there were two letters that had completely different sounds. There was the letter Alef and the letter Ayin. And the letter Ayin – most modern Jews don’t pronounce the Ayin – I usually don’t, either, because in modern Hebrew you don’t – but in ancient Hebrew it was pronounced differently than the Alef.

There’s this great passage in the Talmud. It talks in the Talmud about how you don’t allow someone from the city of Beit She’an to lead the prayer service because they pronounce their Alef as an Ayin and their Ayin as an Alef. In other words, 2,000 years ago, you had Jews who pronounced the Ayin the same way I do, the same as an Alef.

So you can’t hear the difference between aleikhem and aleikhem, they sound identical. But if you pronounce the Ayin, it’s aleikhem and ahlekhem. It’s difficult for Western speakers to pronounce it. And the point is, even 2,000 years ago there were Jews who pronounced them identically. And we have a reference to that, of course, in the Gospels, where they say to Peter, “We know you’re with that guy, because you’re a Galilean; we know from your speech.” They heard that he pronounced Hebrew a certain way.

Keith: We also have an example in the Tanakh. People had two different ways.

Nehemia: Shibolet and Sibolet in Judges 12, but here we’re talking specifically about what are called guttural letters. The guttural letters are Alef… And people say, “Well, Alef doesn’t have a sound, it’s just a vowel.” That’s not true. Alef is a consonant called a glottal stop. If you put your hand up to your neck – I hope this doesn’t mess with the microphone – and you say, “uh oh”.

Keith: Uh oh.

Nehemia: That feeling in your hand, from your throat, that’s called a glottal stop, and that is the consonantal sound made by an Alef. That’s Alef. Heh is another guttural letter. Khet is a guttural letter, and Ayin is a guttural letter. And what happened is in Second Temple times, you had Jews in the Galilee, like Beit She’an is in the Galilee – or it’s just south of the Galilee – you had Jews in northern Israel who confused and mixed Alef, Heh, Khet and Ayin.

And there’s a great story in the Talmud about a man who walks through the marketplace, he’s a Galilean. He says, “I want to buy amar, amar, amar,” and they have no idea what he’s talking about. Does he mean khamer? Does he mean amar? Does he mean tzemer? There are five different things it could be because his pronunciation as a Galilean mixes all these different sounds, most of them gutturals.

So, back to what we have here in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. All 20 surviving manuscripts on this section of Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew have “aleikhem” – “to you”, instead of what the Greek and Delitzsch has, which is ahleikhem with an Ayin, and that means “against you, concerning you, about you”. So that’s very different. They’re not speaking about you lies. They’re speaking lies to you.

Keith: Stop the presses, everyone! Stop the presses, everyone!

Nehemia: And who are they lying about?

Keith: Yeshua.

Nehemia: They’re speaking lies to you about Yeshua. Wow. Wow.

So part of the persecution isn’t just to say, “You have to bring the sacrifice to the Roman emperor, deny Jesus.” There’s another aspect of the persecution according to Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, is where they lie about Yeshua when they speak to you. They tell you things that he taught and that he said they didn’t say.

Wow, if that’s not a pearl, I don’t know what is! And all 20 manuscripts have the same exact thing, the aleikhem with an Alef.

Keith: Oh, my goodness, my goodness, my goodness. So Nehemia, when you first saw that, what was your thought?

Nehemia: Well, that’s different. My first thought was that’s a scribal error, and I wanted to Howard-it.

Keith: You sure did.

Nehemia: I said, “Obviously he means aleikhem with an Ayin. He doesn’t mean aleikhem with an Alef, because – ‘they’re speaking to you lies about…’ what does that even mean?” Okay, but that’s what it says. I looked at all 20 manuscripts – I looked in 28 and the other 8 didn’t have it – but I looked in all the manuscripts, and they all have aleikhem, not ahleikhem. They all have “to you” rather than “about you”.

Keith: Permission to go into a little bit of controversy.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: I’ve had a lot of people writing to me again, say “again”.

Nehemia: Again.

Keith: Over the fact that we’ve been using this Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. I just got an email two days ago where someone is raking me on one side to the other side, talking about the fact that you should not be looking at this Hebrew manuscript because it is anti-Yeshua. You actually heard that before.

Nehemia: You know where I first heard that? You were sitting in my house, and you got a letter from a Christian television station rebuking you for bringing the Aleppo Codex. They said the anti-Yeshua Aleppo Codex and the anti-Yeshua Leningrad Codex onto Christian television… And I turned to you, and I said, “If the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, which are the most accurate copies of the Bible in Hebrew, are anti-Yeshua, then believers in Yeshua have got a problem, because the Hebrew Bible’s anti-Yeshua. So either these people don’t know what they’re talking about, or they reject the Tanakh in Hebrew.”

And look, there have been Christians in history who rejected the Tanakh in Hebrew. You have Marcion, famously, who established Marcionism. Marcion was in the 2nd century, in what today is Asia Minor and Turkey, and Marcion said the God of the Old Testament was an evil god. He was a god of flesh, the god of this world, the god of the earth, and it’s only the God of the New Testament, the god of Spirit, Jesus, who is the true God, and you want to get away from this filthy, disgusting earth and get to his spirit world, the spirit world of Jesus.

So it’s been done before, where Christians have said the Tanakh is anti-Yeshua. These guys at Christian television weren’t the first to say it. So it’s possible they were Marcionites, or they were just ignoramuses. I think it was the latter.

Keith: But here’s what’s interesting about the issue with Shem Tov. Here we are talking about one little letter. Nehemia, listen. Folks, you know who says this best? Michael Rood. Michael says this, and I love when he says it, “Nehemia, you’re one of the most honest scholars I know.” And people have taken that phrase and pursued you because of it.

I want to give an example where you didn’t have to bring that information. You didn’t have to bring that Hebrew pearl. You didn’t have to go to those manuscripts. And what has happened over this last… I don’t know how long it’s been that we’ve been doing this. I mean, it feels like forever. What you did that changed the game for study was you brought all of those manuscripts together and you compared and contrasted down to the very littlest, smallest little letter. And here, by doing that, we have something that radically changes that verse. I want to say thank you.

Nehemia: Well, let’s take Howard, for example. He doesn’t translate “to you”, he translates…

Keith: “Against you.”

Nehemia: He’s taking the Greek word kath or kata. And I wouldn’t say that’s dishonest on his part…

Keith: No.

Nehemia: He’s saying, “Okay, I’ve got to put something in the translation. ‘To you’ doesn’t make sense to me.”

Keith: What do you mean it doesn’t make sense to him?

Nehemia: Obviously it didn’t make sense to him, or he would have translated what it said. So instead, he translated in his mind; he said, “Obviously they mean Ayin, they don’t mean Alef.” So in his mind, maybe even subconsciously he changed it, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t say it’s dishonest on his part, he’s doing the best he can.

Philology, which is a study of ancient texts using linguistics and paleography and history and archaeology is an inexact science, you do the best you can. And if I’ve said things wrong, it wasn’t because I’m trying to deceive people, it’s because I don’t always get it right, believe it or not. And so, when I find out there’s a mistake, I try to correct it. We’re doing the best we can. Howard did a great job for what he was able to do back in that period of time, and we can do better today, that’s the beauty of it.

But I’ll tell you, the desire, the urge to Howard, this verse was almost overwhelming to the point where I’m like, “I have to translate ‘they speak lies about you’. We know that’s what it means! What would it possibly even mean, ‘to you?’”

And what does it mean, “to you”? What lies have people spoken about Yeshua to the people who believe in Yeshua? Not to those who don’t, but to the followers of Yeshua who are persecuted?

Keith: And actually, this is a group conversation for you that are listening. This is a group conversation. Before we do that, can I just share just one thing that happened with this verse?

Nehemia: Sure.

Keith: Before we got to the issue of “to you”, because I want to just tell you something that happened. When I read the verse, when it said, “Blessed are you when they persecute, revile you and say against you all kinds of evil,” and this word, “for my sake,” kind of gets lost. I don’t know if you see that or not, like what do you mean, “for my sake”? That’s what he has in English.

I thought about the many people that will use the same verse… This is a bad example, surely someone’s going to be offended when I say this. They’ll go and they’ll steal something. And after they stole it, the people will come and catch them on the job. They stole it on the job. The people caught them stealing, and they said, “Hey, listen, you’re fired.” And they’ll come to this verse, and they’ll say, “I’ve been persecuted. I’ve been fired because of my faith,” and it really had nothing to do with their faith, it had to do with their actions.

Nehemia: And that actually happens?

Keith: Oh, absolutely. And then you have other people that are listening right now that literally do get persecuted because of righteousness as they’re living their life. Torah observant… there’s some of you that have been pursued out of your church. I don’t know if you know that. There are people listening that…

Nehemia: I’ve heard of it. I know people.

Keith: Where people have been actually, literally pursued out of their church, pursued out of their fellowship. Why? Because they’re not toeing the party line. Would that be the kind of persecution that we’re talking about?

Nehemia: So what you’re saying is kind of radical. Meaning, there are two ways you can take this verse as it’s written in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew. The first way is – people who don’t believe in Jesus will tell lies to the believers in Jesus because of him, maybe to destroy their faith. That’s possibility number one.

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: Possibility number two is – the people who claim to believe in Jesus will tell lies to other people who believe in Jesus because of him, because they don’t like what the other people say, who believe in Yeshua… they don’t like what Yeshua actually said. And so, they tell lies about what he actually said.

Keith: Is this too deep?

Nehemia: This is profound, Keith. Wow.

Keith: Can we talk about this just a little bit?

Nehemia: Please. Wow.

Keith: Here’s what I’m imagining… And this is what I love about this teaching, the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes were good then, 2,000 years ago. The Beatitudes were good during the persecutions of any number of the people, the pursuit of the apostles and others. The Beatitudes are good now. And constantly the question that I would always ask is, “What did it mean then, what does it mean now?” Now, I had a book here earlier, and I took it off the table. Gevalt! I took the book, I got rid of it. Because I think his only focus was, “What did the words of Yeshua mean… what do they mean now theologically?” Do you see what I’m saying?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Rather than asking the question, “What did it mean then and how do we bring that to today and apply it into our life?” And there’s a misapplication, sometimes, of this verse, where people will say… I had many people where this happens, where they really just did some really dirty bad stuff, and then they’re saying, “I’m being persecuted.”

Well, I don’t think that’s what Yeshua was talking about. “I was going about my business, living according to the word of God, and they pursued me.”

My son, I’ll give you an example. This is going to be so controversial…

Nehemia: Uh oh.

Keith: But I’m going to say it. One of my sons worked at a job… Can I say this on television? I mean, this is our thing, right?

Nehemia: Go for it…

Keith: So, my son comes home and he says, “Dad, I was with my boss, and my boss got mad at me about something completely that had nothing to do with it.” And she said to him out of her mouth, “You Jew bastard.” My son’s not Jewish. My son said, “Why did she…” can I say this on TV?

Nehemia: You just did.

Keith: Why did you call my son a Jew bastard? And he says, “Dad, I guess the only reason is, possibly, I keep the Sabbath and I had the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey on my desk and she somehow interpreted that as that I was Jewish, and out of her mouth she said it. And then she said, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I say?’” And she backed it up, backed it up, backed it up…

And so, since that time we’ve said that when Dad is doing certain things that people say, “Why doesn’t he want to have the event at his house during the Sabbath? Well, it’s because he’s a…”

Nehemia: Jew b…

Keith: But I’m not Jewish, Nehemia. The point was it was an interpretation of that. So I would say in that situation, my son was being pursued not because he did anything wrong, it was a misinterpretation…

Nehemia: So this is really interesting, what you’re saying.

Keith: Listen, am I way off the farm?

Nehemia: No, not at all.

Keith: It’s the last episode of Biblical Beatitudes.

Nehemia: You got to taste a little bit of what it’s like to be a Jew and be persecuted for Judaism, and I got a little bit of a taste of what it’s like to be a believer in Yeshua – even though I’m not considered a believer in Yeshua – I was doing this interview years ago with a gentleman from Hong Kong. We were in a park in Jerusalem…

Keith: You’re not going to tell this story!

Nehemia: And we’re sitting at the park bench, and he has his cameras rolling, his GoPro and these different cameras, and there’s this man standing across from us. And he gets closer and closer and closer. And finally, he starts yelling at the man from Hong Kong, and he says, pointing at me, “This man is worse than Hitler,” pointing to me. “Hitler wanted to destroy our bodies; this man wants to destroy our souls.”

Keith: This is in Israel, Nehemia.

Nehemia: This is in Jerusalem…

Keith: In your neighborhood.

Nehemia: A three-minute walk from my front door in Jerusalem. There’s a man screaming at me saying I’m worse than Hitler. And why am I worse than Hitler? Like, where’d this come from? I’m a bald, overweight guy. What have I done? I don’t put my dog on a leash? That’s how I’m worse than Hitler? What are we talking about here?

And he explained. He assumed I was a Messianic Jew because I kept talking about Yeshua. “Yeshua this, Yeshua that.” So this man assumed, say “assumed”.

Keith: Assumed.

Nehemia: He assumed I was a Messianic Jew. And he also assumed a second thing – that the entire purpose of Messianic Jews is not to pursue a life as Jews believing in Yeshua, it’s really a bait and switch, a scam to trick Jews into believing in Jesus.

Now, to be fair, I’ve met Messianic Jews who have openly told me that’s their purpose, but I don’t think that’s the purpose of most Messianic Jews. I think their purpose is they’re Jewish, they already believe in Yeshua, and they don’t want to give up their Jewish identity. You know, Yeshua was a Jew, so why should they stop being Jews? And so, I got a little taste of what it might be like to be a Messianic Jew.

Keith: But you’re not.

Nehemia: And I’m not. But in that moment, I got a taste of it. And you got a little bit taste of what it’s like to be Jewish. And it’s kind of interesting. It’s easy to say, “don’t be so sensitive,” until you experience it. Then you’re like – wow! And you know what? Religious persecution – religious bigotry, I’m going to call it that. Because we’ve got this term, “racism”. Everyone in the United States is against racism. How do I know? Because the worst thing you can accuse someone of in the US is being a racist.

If you would accuse somebody in Nazi Germany of being a racist, they’d be like, “Oh, yeah!” They’d be like, “Absolutely! We’re the master race and everyone is untermensch, they’re subhuman.” You accuse a Jew, or anybody in America of being a racist and they’re deeply offended. But there still is a big bigotry, and it’s not race-based bigotry, there still is a bigotry that’s completely acceptable as we’re recording this.

Maybe this will change, but it’s completely acceptable in American society if you say about someone… and Jews are an exception because of the Holocaust, but if you say about someone that… and I won’t even say one. But if you call out his religion and you say how you despise him… I’ll take Catholic. You have people say, “That woman shouldn’t be in the Supreme Court, she’s a Catholic. She can’t be loyal to the United States and the Constitution, she’s loyal to the Pope.” Can you imagine in the 21st century that we’re still having that conversation? That you’re questioning their loyalty to the country because of their religion? And they say this without any shame. It’s unbelievable to me that religious bigotry is still socially acceptable in the United States in the 21st century, that blows my mind.

Keith: Well, now for the controversy about you asking me the question – what is something someone could say to you about Yeshua that is a lie? And I think that list is legion. It can start with the smallest thing. They could come to you and say, “Why are you reading that Torah? Yeshua is anti-Torah.” That’s a lie. Am I right?

Nehemia: I think you’re right, but I’m not a Christian.

Keith: This is what I’ve appreciated about our study together… And I’ve had some attacks of people and it’s been over a long time. I mean, you brought up the whole television thing… I don’t know if you want… I don’t want to go into that.

Nehemia: No, we won’t go into that now.

Keith: We won’t go into that. But the point is there are sometimes where people are misinformed, and in their being misinformed they attempt to misinform others. And I would say it the way that Yeshua said it – they attempt to lie about what they don’t know about. And I think what he’s saying in that verse is, “Listen, rejoice and be glad.”

Now that’s the part that I want…

Nehemia: Save that for the Plus. Can we read Isaiah 66:5? And then we’ll go in the Plus and talk about the… because we have something so cool on this verse 12 that…

Keith: This is an epic Biblical Beatitudes series…

Nehemia: I feel like this is the crescendo…

Keith: This is a crescendo!

Nehemia: …of the entire Biblical Beatitudes series, it’s very cool.

Keith: Listen folks, it’s something he found. And guess what, just before we turned on the camera, he’s going to bring it to us and show it. I mean, that’s pretty exciting.

Nehemia: I’m excited about that. But let’s look at Isaiah 66:5, because when I hear Yeshua talking about being persecuted for my sake, I think of these words, “Hear the word of Yehovah, you who tremble at His word. Your own people who hate you…” this isn’t foreigners. “Your own people who hate you and reject you for my namesake have said, ‘Let Yehovah be glorified so that we may see your joy.’”

And this is study in sarcasm, right? There’s a group of Israel who are loyal to the true God without all the idolatry and the man-made takanot and the rules and regulations. They just want to follow what God commanded in the Torah, and the people – their own people who hate them and reject them say – “For my name’s sake, let Yehovah be glorified so we may see your joy.” They’re mocking them, “but it is they who shall be put to shame.”

Keith: My gosh.

Nehemia: Wow. And on that note, we have to transition to verse 12, where he says, “Rejoice and be happy.”

Keith: So I’m supposed to now do this. Here’s what I’m supposed to do in the studio. I’m supposed to tell you, “Now, all of you folks that would like to join us in the Plus episode, go to BFAinternational.com, and on the front page you can become a member and begin to support us.” And some are just like, “I can’t believe that guy, he’s there asking us for money. A total of $9.99 a month.”

Nehemia says in the other thing, “Please join us as a Support Team member so that you can get the Plus.” And Nehemia, I’ve got to tell you something.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: I have counted since I’ve been in this studio eight people that we’ve come in contact to do this episode. Eight people. And from what I can tell, they all have lives. They all have places they live. None of them are homeless that I know. At least none of them look like they’re homeless.

Nehemia: Do you live on a bench? He says no.

Keith: In other words, these are all people who have lives, they have families, and we’ve come into this studio to do this work, to send the best information on the Beatitudes in the world! Let me tell how I tell my wife this all the time. What we’re doing right now isn’t being done anywhere in the world.

Nehemia: That sounds accurate to me.

Keith: Is there anyone, Jew and gentile, coming together looking at the manuscripts, some of them that have not been seen, to bring the information – language, history… Can I use some excitement?

Nehemia: Go for it.

Keith: Language, history and context of the words of Yeshua. Some people say, “It’s all about Yeshua, except for what he said.”

Nehemia: Wow, that’s profound.

Keith: “It’s all about Yeshua, but I don’t want to know what he really meant.” Hey, guess what we are doing? We’re giving people the information. We’re using Shem Tov’s Hebrew gospel of Matthew as a source. We’re comparing and contrasting. How many times did I hear you say, “I’m looking at the Greek.” It’s the Greek, it’s the Hebrew, it’s the English. We’re bringing language, history and context together to give you this information.

And people are arguing. I feel like being Michael right now. What I love about Michael, “I don’t care what you say about this!” I love when Michael does that. Because you know what, in this situation, I don’t care if you don’t want to go to the Plus. Go do something else. But those people that want to get this information… am I right or wrong? I love it when he does that, because there’s passion. And there’s passion about this. We’ve come into this studio. Thank you to The Production Group for what you’ve done. Thank you to Michael, thank you to all you folks.

But now we’re going to move to the Plus section where we’re going to get to something that gives information that’s just not available. Become a Premium member, it’s $9.99 a month. Boy oh boy. And you can have access to everything. Can we go now to the Plus to talk about the rest of this?

Nehemia: Let’s do it. Can we end with a prayer?

Keith: A big prayer. Can you pray?

Nehemia: Yehovah, Avinu shebashamayim, those among my own people who hate that I teach Your name; I ask You to have mercy upon them. Some of them scoff at me and laugh at me and persecute me in their own ways. I ask that You have mercy upon them and turn their heart towards Your holy and glorious name. And I thank You for giving me the opportunity to share about these things and teach these things. Amen.

Keith: Amen. And Father, thank you so much for so many that have gone before us. We stand on the shoulders of those who did dig and those that have studied. I thank You for this opportunity. And for our friends that are listening right now, Father, I pray in all of this they would understand our heart. Our heart is to reach as many as possible with a message that is an epic message 2,000 years ago, that is an epic message today. For Jew and gentile and all those in between that want to understand what does it mean to be in relationship with You, Father. And what exceptional, exceptional teaching that we’re being able to give. I thank You so much for this, and we just pray that it would go forth 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!