Hebrew Gospel Pearls #27 – Rightly Dividing the Word

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.

Keith: So, what is my role in all of this? I’m going to tell you right now, here’s my role. I’ll take my jacket off…

Nehemia: What?

Keith: No. I’m going to take my jacket off right now! Here’s my role as we study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD.

Nehemia: He’s going to roll up the sleeves!

Keith: And I want to know, how many people will do this with me? Roll up our sleeves and get down with Nehemia with the information, the inspiration and the revelation.

Keith: Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls episode 27, the beginning of season four. Before we get started, I know people always get frustrated when I say, “before we get started”. “Why does Keith want to do before we get started?” Because I will not continue without first acknowledging this important thing that’s happening right here, right now. We have with us Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD, from Bar Ilan University; and the last time that you saw us, when we were going through season three, we had not gotten a chance to make this announcement. I want to make this announcement right now. Hebrew Gospel Pearls has Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD, from Bar Ilan, and Nehemia, I’m humbled and I’m blessed, but I want you to share with our friends something about the process – why did you do it? What is it? What is this all about?

Nehemia: Well, first, I just want to acknowledge to the people that… we’re pre-recording this, so they’ve actually heard about me getting my PhD months ago.

Keith: Wait, wait, wait, don’t you understand? Some people have heard that.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: We’ve got a brand-new audience. We’re all over the world right now. There’s some people that don’t know us.

Nehemia: For sure, okay.

Keith: Tell them about this!

Nehemia: So, I did my master’s degree at the Hebrew University many years ago. I was doing research and putting out podcasts and teachings and didn’t have any plans to do a PhD. I won’t go into the whole story, but I ended up giving a lecture at the… it was actually your idea, you said, “Nehemia, let’s go to the International Society of Biblical Literature in Helsinki.” So, I gave a lecture at this SBL in Helsinki in 2018, and I had somebody walk up to me afterwards and say, “This is PhD material – is this part of your dissertation?” And I’m like, “No, I have no intention to do a PhD.” And one thing led to another!

Keith: To say the least!

Nehemia: It’s kind of like in the Book of Esther, there’s this phrase “ve’odeno medaber,” “and he was still speaking”. And then the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, and that’s really what happened. It was just these series of events and I eventually started working formally on a PhD dissertation. I had essentially already written a portion of it; I had to go through a whole bunch of longer process; a lecture at SBL isn’t part of a dissertation, it had to be developed. But I ended up writing, and my topic… I can actually show people my dissertation.

Keith: Awesome.

Nehemia: This is what it looks like, we can show it here on the screen. My title is The Writing, Erasure, and Correction of the Tetragrammaton in Medieval Hebrew Bible Manuscripts, and that is at The Zalman Shamir Department of Bible at Bar Ilan University. Professor Yosef Ofer, the top scholar in the world in current scholarship on the Masoretic texts, was my PhD supervisor on this; and it was through his intervention that I was able to get in to see the Aleppo Codex. We’ve talked about that, but I never said the context in which I did it. We were keeping this under wraps.

Keith: Yeah, for good reason!

Nehemia: We were keeping it under wraps really for the last, at this point, four years, three-and-a-half, four years, and the reason I was doing that is I wanted to just do my work. I just wanted to do my academic studies without having… And look, I’ll be honest with you – when I was at Hebrew University, I had people writing emails, calling up and harassing my professors. And my professors would say to me, “Well, we’ve got 40 students, and we only get emails from about one of them.”

Keith: So even back then you were…

Nehemia: Well, there were people who were like, “Nehemia says he has a Master’s from Hebrew University. I don’t think it’s true, is it true?” And I actually asked one of the professors, “Did you respond?” He’s like, “Why would I respond to some rando from the internet?” He said to me, “If they have that question, they should ask you, or they could look up your thesis in the library catalog.” That’s the best way to do it, at least in Israel, is you look up the person’s thesis or dissertation in the library catalog. And here I’m going to show you Keith – in the library catalog of Bar Ilan University, I’ll show it up here on the screen. You can see it has the title, and there it says Nehemia Gordon author, 2021. The pretty cool thing is the thesis is actually online, although currently, as we’re recording this, you have to log in as a student of the university. Eventually, I think in about a year, I’m not sure what the procedure is exactly, anybody will be able to just go on the website of the university and read my thesis, all 285 pages or something like that.

Mostly, I wrote it in English. It’s interesting, when I wrote my master’s thesis… wow, 15 years ago at this point, I wanted to write it in English and they said, “Well, this is the Hebrew University, you should write it in Hebrew.” Okay, I wrote it in Hebrew; it took me a little bit longer, but I wrote it in Hebrew. When I went to do the PhD they said, “We prefer you write it in English, because if you write it in Hebrew very few people ever read it, and we want people to read this stuff.” English is now the international language of scholarship.

But I want to get to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, so I’ll just quickly tell the story of why I did the lecture at SBL in the first place. So, we had done the teaching; I had done it many years ago, and we’ve shared about this many times, about how when they wrote the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, they accidentally put in the cholem, what you called the “cholem from heaven” in your book… whatever it’s called, your little book. What is that book called?

Keith: It’s right on the screen there…

Nehemia: His Hallowed Name Revealed Again, that’s the name of his book; and I talked about that in my book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. And we have people say, “Well! These are official manuscripts, these are official manuscripts of the Bible, they would never make a mistake, and if they did you would never find it.” Well, I’d already been working on looking for the full vowels, and I kept finding how they made mistakes with the name, and they would do different things to correct it. And I thought, “Well, this is a great topic for an academic conference. What are all the different things they do when they make a mistake with the name?” And I found something like… I don’t even remember, at the time, I think, when I gave the lecture it was like 12 things; since then I found a couple more. So, not only did they make mistakes in the Hebrew manuscripts in the Middle Ages, in the Aleppo Codex I found… this is the coolest thing, Keith. I did a teaching a few years back called The Mistake That Got It Right.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: And in the teaching I explained how this scholar who lives today, he’s an old man in Ashdod, Israel, he spent years with Prof. Israel Yevin examining the Aleppo Codex. And he told me that one of the things he remembers is if they made a mistake with the vowels or accents of the Aleppo Codex, they didn’t change it, because not only were they not allowed to erase the letters, they’re also not allowed to erase the vowels. And I remember doing the teaching and saying… and this is now documented in a database, and I said, “I wish I could check that for myself.” I said this in the teaching.

Well, as part of doing the PhD dissertation I got to check it for myself, and within about 20 minutes I found that it was wrong. Not only did they erase the vowels and the accents of the name Yehovah, I found five places where they erased the actual letters of the name Yehovah – that’s in my PhD dissertation. Later, with Professor Ofer, I ended up spending nine hours actually examining the Aleppo Codex itself.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: And that was… years ago I got to see the Aleppo Codex with Reggie White; the guy showing it to us was wearing white gloves. I was standing two or three feet away; I couldn’t touch it.

Keith: We have that picture; we’re going to put that up.

Nehemia: Yeah, we’ll put that up.

Keith: That’s a beautiful picture.

Nehemia: But I don’t have a picture of this next thing because it was inside of a vault, and I wasn’t allowed to take photographs, or I’m not allowed to publish the photographs, let’s put it that way. I actually do have photographs! But, because of security reasons, maybe years from now, when the location of the codex has been moved, I can share it. We got to spend nine hours examining the codex with a microscope, ultraviolet infrared, at 50X magnification, and we could see things.

One of the things I found is other places where it had the vowels Yehovah, and the scribe came along and erased the “O”, and so there’s no question this was a mistake. I call it “the mistake that got it right.“ It was a mistake that in six instances were not corrected; in other instances, at least one other instance was corrected.

Keith: So that’s why I wanted you to do that. Folks, I asked Nehemia to explain this because it’s significant to how we’re going to proceed with Hebrew Gospel Pearls.

Nehemia: Can I tell you why this is important for me?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Years ago, I thought about doing the PhD, and one of the things I was very disappointed with in the academic world… I would ask my professors, “So how does this help the people?” And I remember I had a professor who said, “This isn’t for the people.” And I’m like, “So this is just for the six other people who are ever going to read this journal article on some obscure topic?” And I thought “If we’re not doing this to get to truth that we can share with people…” And look, in some respects, truth is tentative; all I could tell you in academia and scholarship is what I know right now. I might find another manuscript next week. I might find the manuscript that has the vowels Yahweh, and it’s signed by Moshe Ben Amram HaNavi, Moses, the son of Amram the prophet. We could find that, it’s hypothetically possible. No one’s found any manuscript in Hebrew written by Jews that has Yahweh that I’m aware of. I’ve looked at thousands, in fact over 10,000. Actually, in the dissertation I had to list how many pages I went through, pages, and fragments, and columns, and it was something like 90,000 plus. I don’t even remember the number; it was just this massive number.

Why this is important for me is I want to do what I did on my PhD dissertation with the Tanakh manuscripts, I want to do that with the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and I want to take people along on the journey and not only tell them, “Guys here is the truth spoken from the mouth of the PhD.” I don’t want that. I want to show you so you see for yourself in the actual sources, in the actual manuscripts, what we can find in these sources that were preserved by Jews in the Middle Ages of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

Keith: I just gave you the softball, you just hit… it took 10 minutes for you to get to that, but I wanted you to get to that, and I wanted you all to get to that, because here’s the deal. We’re going take a different approach. In fact, I’ve even asked Nehemia to even promote it this way, “Hebrew Gospel Pearls, study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD.” So, what is my role in all of this? I’m going to tell you right now, here’s my role. I’ll take my jacket off…

Nehemia: What?

Keith: No. I’m going to take my jacket off right now! Here’s my role as we study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD.

Nehemia: He’s going to roll up the sleeves!

Keith: And I want to know how many people will do this with me. Roll up our sleeves and get down with Nehemia with the information, the inspiration and the revelation that I have had a chance to see him dig into, and you shared it with me Nehemia! What I want to do, and what we’ve agreed we’re going to do is we’re going to make all of you Study Partners. My role will be to represent you each week. By the way, I want to thank Lynell for this. Lynell said, “Hey, people make comments, so each week we could share comments from people, we have those.” This is going to be a wonderful process, but for me the reason it’s exciting, Nehemia, is your willingness to do what you just said. You have always let me into the safe; sometimes you got upset. “Why did I let him into the safe? Why did I give him the key?” Now we’re going to give you all the keys. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to start with Hebrew Gospel Pearls, Matthew chapter 5 verse 20.

Nehemia: Let’s do it!

Keith: And one of our dear friends said, let’s read it first in Hebrew…

Nehemia: Yes.

Keith: …and do a translation. Let’s get started. Matthew 5:20, here we go.

Nehemia: Alright, in Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew it says, “Ba’et hahi, amar Yeshua le’talmidav,” “At that time, Yeshua said to his disciples,” “be’emet ani omer lechem,” “in truth I say to you,” “eem lo tigdal tzidkatchem yoter mi’ha’prushim ve’ha’chachamim lo tavo’u be’malchut shamayim.” “If your righteousness is not greater than that of the Pharisees and the sages, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.” Keith, there’s four major things that we could talk about here.

Keith: I’ve got to read the English first; I’ve got to read it from the English.

Nehemia: Oh! Is this the Red-Letter Series?

Keith: No, no, no!

Nehemia: I’m confused, because I thought the Red-Letter Series ended in Matthew 5:19.

Keith: Oh no, no, you don’t understand. Don’t you understand? This is going to be a study process.

Nehemia: Can you tell people what the Red-Letter Series is?

Keith: I’m going to tell everybody what the Red-Letter Series is.

Nehemia: Because that’s not part of my ministry, Makor Hebrew Foundation, that’s something you’re doing.

Keith: No, that’s not a part of Nehemia’s ministry, but here’s what it is a part of. What I asked myself is, how will I get to the fruit of being able to study with you? And the best way to do that is to prepare. So, what I did is I went through the entire Sermon on the Mount. I used the resource that you gave us, which is the pointed text, and we went with a group of Study Partners all the way through the Sermon on the Mount with the hope and the prayer and the desire that eventually we would get you to do the same thing. So, the Red-Letter Series gives people a chance to go ahead and look at the verse, look at the situation, see this, but then come to this episode and study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon. Good news, bad news, it’s already done. Bad news for those who aren’t interested in being Study Partners, you won’t have access to it. Good news for those that are Study Partners, those that support Nehemia at Nehemia’s Wall and BFA Premium people, you’ll have access to the entire Sermon on the Mount in advance, so you will be able to study it like I have, then come to Hebrew Gospel Pearls and study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD. That’s what the Red-Letter Series is about.

Nehemia: So, read us the translation that you have there.

Keith: Yeah! Real quick. This is Howard’s translation. “At that time Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I say to you, if you’re righteousness is not greater than the Pharisees and the sages, you shall not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Here’s what it says in the NASB, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Go ahead, my friend.

Nehemia: So, there’s four major topics here… there’s a bunch of smaller topics that at this point I’m not sure if we’ll get to, but four major topics. I don’t know if we’ll get to all of them today either. We have righteousness…

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: What is righteousness? He’s talking about what is the righteousness that the Tanakh talks about, what is righteousness for the Pharisees. Who are the scribes? Who are the Pharisees? And what does it mean to enter the Kingdom of heaven?

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: I don’t think we’re going to get it… I think every time we touch on the Kingdom of heaven, we keep postponing it.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because it’s such an important theme, when we get to later chapters of Matthew there’s a whole series of things in the Kingdom of heaven, maybe we’ll deal with it there. But we’ve got to talk about this idea of being more righteous than the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Now, I’ve heard an interpretation of this passage that takes this to mean… and I’ve heard this from a certain type of Messianic, and I want to use the term Messianic in a very broad sense. And I want to say from the outset that many of the people that I am describing right now in this terminology as Messianic might say, “Well, I’m not Messianic.” And I’ll say, “Okay, Hebrew Roots.” “I’m not Hebrew Roots, I’m not part of that movement.” Okay, I’m using it in a very broad sense to refer to anybody… well, I shouldn’t say anybody. I’m going to give three different definitions of three different what I call Messianic type 1, 2 and 3, and the reason I’m bringing this is type 1 takes this verse and says… sorry, not type 1, type 2 takes this passage that we just read and says, “This proves you have to follow the Pharisees.” And this actually was the inspiration years ago when I was interacting with Michael Rood… we’re in his studio, so I want to give a shout out to Michael. I’m so thankful for everything he’s done.

Keith: Michael, Michael, Michael… I love it.

Nehemia: And he came to me with this question. He was in Jerusalem, living in Arnona, which is a neighborhood in Jerusalem overlooking the Old City, really even looking out of the Old City on the Temple Mount. And he had these people who would come to him who would dress like ultra-Orthodox Jews, they’d observe the Shabbat like ultra-Orthodox Jews, and I’m talking about if there’s not a string around the city, they can’t walk out with their keys in their pocket kind of thing. I grew up like that, it’s modern day Phariseeism. I don’t mean Phariseeism in a bad way, I mean Pharisees really means something like “the holy ones”, meaning lehafrish, to separate.

Keith: To separate, yes.

Nehemia: And so prushim are those who are separated. What are they separated from? They’re separated from the uncleanness of the multitudes, of the Am Ha’aretz, the people of the land. What is the uncleanness of the people of the land? So, the Pharisees had this idea while the Temple stood, it’s no longer today, but they had an ideal when the Temple stood that you must eat your… and we won’t have time to go into all of this today, when we get to Matthew 15, we’ll talk about this in a lot more detail. You eat your non-sacrificial meat in a state of ritual purity. Now, why would you do that?

In the Torah, the only time I need to be in a state of ritual purity is if I’m eating the sacrifices of the Temple. So, the Pharisees said, “We want to go above and beyond. We want to put a fence around the Torah.” And here it’s a fence around a fence around a fence; that’s a term they use, “a fence around the Torah.” And the image there is if the Torah is this burning fire and I touch it, I get burned by violating the Torah, I’ll put a fence.

I’ll use the analogy, I’m on a diet. I’m trying to lose weight here, and there’s this big mountain of donuts, and if I have access to those donuts there’s a good chance I’m going to eat it. I’m not actually a donut guy, I’m a cookie guy… there’s a big mountain of chocolate chip cookies, and there’s actually peanut butter there as well, so what I can do is I put a fence around the table; I can’t even get to the table. Well, there’s no way I’m going to eat the cookies… unless I climb the fence, I suppose, but it slows me down. So, the idea of the Pharisees, one of their fundamental concepts is to put a fence around the Torah and putting a fence around the Torah keeps you from even getting to those cookies. So, if pork is forbidden in the Torah, well, I don’t even sit down at a table where somebody is eating pork. If there’s a Gentile at the table, I could say, “Well, I’ll eat my food and he’ll eat his food.” But I might accidentally eat his food. So that’s a fence around the Torah, that’s what the Pharisees did.

One of the things they did is, this fence around the Torah, was to say, “Not only will we observe this in the case of sacrificial meat, we’ll do it for non-sacrificial meat as well.” Like, if you’re having a hamburger at your house, we have to be in a state of ritual purity to eat that; that’s why they were washing their hands. Like I said, we’ll get to this when we get to Matthew 15. If we live that long!

Keith: Wait! Just a second, I have to stop for a second. Did you say when we get to Mathew… I’m making a commitment right now; we’re going to get through the Sermon on the Mount. Is it possible that we’ll go beyond that?

Nehemia: If God allows us to live long enough, yes.

Keith: Wow, Amen.

Nehemia: So, the modern-day Pharisees years ago… meaning, they’re no longer called Pharisees because this issue of sacrificial meat and non-sacrificial meat ceased to be an issue when the Temple was destroyed. They no longer observe that, mostly; there were pockets throughout the Middle Ages who did, but mostly it was no longer observed.

So, these people, Michael would interact with them, and you’d look at them and you’d think they’re ultra-Orthodox Jew or a modern-day Pharisee, and they’re believers in Yeshua, and you’d say, “What’s going on? When you lived in Florida, you would go to the Messianic synagogue, and you used to go to Evangelical church. Why do you look like an ultra-Orthodox Jew, and you still believe in Yeshua?”

And their response to him was Matthew 23, which I’ve written a book about, The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus, hopefully we’ll get to that one day in this series. But also this verse, they’d say, “See? Yeshua says, ‘Be even more righteous than the Pharisees.'” Meaning, be a Pharisee, and be a super Pharisee. Now, is that what he meant?

I want to talk about Messianics type 1, 2, and 3, okay?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: So, type 1 is what you find in… I won’t even name names. What they do is they emulate certain aspects of Rabbinical Judaism, in particular Reform Judaism, in order create a comfortable context for Jews to come to believe in Jesus. And their main objective, they’ll tell you, is to convert Jews.

Type 2 is they emulate Rabbinical Judaism, and they say, “We want to live as Yeshua lived. Yeshua was a Pharisee. He said not only should you follow what the Pharisees do, you should follow what they say even when they don’t do it. And you should be even more righteous than,” pointing to Matthew 5:20. They try to live in accordance with his teaching. Their main objectives, as far as I can tell, is they want to convert Jews, just like maybe everybody with the Great Commission in Matthew does, but their main objective is not to convert Jews; it’s to live as Yeshua lived.

Type 3, they live in accordance with the Tanakh and the New Testament, largely independent of Rabbinical Judaism. What do I mean by largely? They don’t even realize always that they’re following Rabbinical Judaism, they think they’re following the Tanakh, and they don’t realize sometimes they’re following Rabbinical Judaism. But their objective is, “Okay, Jesus was a Jew, let’s live as Jews do,” in accordance with the Tanakh, and not necessarily obey what the Pharisee’s say.

So, that’s three different types of Messianics that I’ve… and I’m using that term very broadly, again, some of the people who might not define themselves as Messianic I’m including there. Group number 2 are the ones who use Matthew 5:20 to try to convince people to follow the oral law, and that’s out there today, you can go online. I would say that’s probably the predominant view within the Hebrew Roots movement, within the type 2 / 3 that’s probably the predominant view as far as I can tell.

Now, if you accept this interpretation, it means you must obey the Pharisee laws even more than the Pharisees do in order to get into the Kingdom of heaven. Now, I’ve been told by reliable sources that according to the New Testament you can’t earn your salvation, and maybe that’s beyond the scope of this discussion.

Keith: I hope so.

Nehemia: But it sounds to me awfully like that. So I want to offer an alternative explanation. Let’s acknowledge that they could be right about Matthew 5:20, that is a possible interpretation of Matthew 5:20. I want to acknowledge that they could be right, and I want to offer an alternative explanation of what it means to be more righteous than the Pharisees, but since you made me talk about my PhD for 20 minutes, I feel like we have to save that for the Plus section! Can we do that?

Keith: It was 10 minutes. I want to say something that has happened, that in the study process one of the things that happened is we did a lot of work in terms of looking at words. I want to do one before our public folks right now, just one. If I asked you right now, someone said, “I want to do a Bible study on the word Pharisee.” What’s the first thing you would do? What would you do to find out about that? Would you open the Tanakh and find Pharisee in Deuteronomy chapter 5?

Nehemia: Well, I would definitely try.

Keith: You’d try, and what would you find? I want you to tap-tap for us.

Nehemia: Let’s do that right now, live.

Keith: While he’s doing this, you all, this is an example of what I think is the power of study with my friend Nehemia, the resources that you have access to, and you type so fast!

Nehemia: So, the first thing obviously, is you’re not going to find the word Pharisee.

Keith: When you say obviously, there’s a lot of people listening that… can you explain?

Nehemia: Alright. So, what is the Tanakh? I’ve got a PhD now in biblical studies, so what’s the Tanakh? I guess it depends on who you ask. If you ask my academic colleagues at most universities – maybe not Bar Ilan, but at most universities – they’ll say, “Well, the Tanakh is a library of books, the earliest of which was written down around the year 700 or 600 BC.” But if you believe that Moses wrote the Torah, which I do, then you’d say, “The Torah was written around 1450 BC,” let’s say, give or take 100 years, who knows, and then the last book in the Tanakh, as far as we can tell, would be… based on internal evidence, I would say, is Chronicles, which is around 350 BC.

Keith: Nice.

Nehemia: Secular scholars would say it’s Daniel, which has parts for 168 BC or 166 BC, that’s if you don’t believe Daniel’s a true prophet and written by Daniel – but I do. So, let’s say it’s written between roughly 1500 and 400 BC. Well, Phariseeism as a movement only first appears in history around 150 or 200 BC, so… really around 200 BC.

Keith: So you’re telling me they missed the book?

Nehemia: They missed the Tanakh, yeah. They missed the Tanakh, or a series of books, right? And that for me was this big shocker. I grew up as a modern-day Pharisee, and I was taught that when Jacob went off to Paddan Aram, fleeing from Esau, first he stopped at the Yeshiva of Shem and Heber and studied the Talmud, and you’re laughing!

Keith: No. I’m just saying…

Nehemia: But I was told this is a fact! And on some level, I think I believed this fact until I sat down and read… I was skeptical to be honest with you, but it was implicitly, it was truth. That’s why I said the truth is tentative… actually, the truth is absolute, but what we know of the truth is tentative, right?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: And I thought that was true at that moment, and then I studied the Tanakh, and I was shocked. One of the things that shocked me more than anything was a story of Shimei, and I don’t have time to tell it right now, but Shimei is one of my favorite characters in the Tanakh, and I was told he was King David’s Rebbi. He sat with King David, and he studied the Talmud, I was taught, and I read the entire books of First and Second Samuel… in Hebrew, it’s just one book, the Book of Shmuel, and I didn’t find any reference to rabbis or Talmud.

And then I got really dangerous, I got this book called The Concordance. Before computers, it was Mandelkern’s Concordatzia, written in the early 20th century – or compiled in the early 20th century. I looked up the word rabbi, and I couldn’t find it anywhere in the Tanakh, and that to me shattered my world. I was told this… I mean, look, there’s an analogy here. I was told that this was the world in which the Tanakh was created, the world of rabbis and Talmud, and Oral Law. And I read the Tanakh, and I didn’t find a single reference in the entire Tanakh to the Oral Law. And maybe the analogy here is for the Christian who looks in the New Testament and doesn’t find Christmas, doesn’t find Easter, doesn’t find a pope, doesn’t find a lot of the things that are the core characteristics of what, let’s say, most people in the world – maybe not certain Christians, but most people – would define as Christianity, you don’t see those in the New Testament.

Now to answer your question. I won’t find the word Pharisee, because Phariseeism didn’t exist until after the Tanakh was written, the last book was written. And maybe you could say that Malachi is the last book… we’re still talking before Alexander the Great, so roughly 350 BC, but I can find the word parash, which means to separate.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: Or to put aside. Leviticus 24:12, “And he was placed in custody,” actually it means something else here, “and he was placed in custody until the decision of Yehovah should be made clear to them.” And “to be made clear” there is lifrosh. Now, in the New Testament you’ve this concept to rightly divide the word, that’s a Hebraism – to divide the word is to interpret, it wasn’t interpreted or explained what should be done. Now, why does it mean that? Because when you read a verse, I can read it in different ways, and the way I read it is in itself an interpretation.

Let’s take an example, Exodus 34 verse 6, it says, “vayomer Yehovah, Yehovah el rachum ve’chanun-erech afaim ve’rav-chesed ve’emet.” “And he said, ‘Yehovah, Yehovah,'”… let’s pull it up to make sure I’m not misquoting it. That was one of the things I was taught as a child, always read it directly from the text… it’s the exact opposite from what some Christians say you should memorize certain passages. And I did, I misquoted it here, “Nehemia’s a liar, he knows what it says.” No, I make mistakes all the time, guys! And that’s why I just went to look it up, so it says, “ve’ya’avor Yehovah al-penav, vayikra, Yehovah, Yehovah el rachum ve’chanun-erech afaim ve’rav-chesed ve’emet.” So it actually says “And Yehovah passed over his face, and he called,” not “and he said,” I misquoted it, good thing I looked it up. So, I could read this in two different ways. I could read “vayikra Yehovah, Yehovah el rachum ve’chanun-erech afaim ve’rav-chesed ve’emet,” “And Yehovah called out, ‘Yehovah is a God who’s merciful and gracious.'” Or I can read it,” “vayikra,” “and he called out, “Yehovah, Yehovah, el rachum ve’chanun.” And by the way, what is “Yehovah, Yehovah”? In Hebrew that’s what’s called a nominal sentence, it means “Yehovah is Yehovah”.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Which is a whole teaching we could do; we’re not going to do it now. But dividing the word, literally dividing the sentence, changes the meaning. And hence, le’faresh is to interpret. So, you would think Pharisee means interpreters, but it’s derived from a passive participle. Parush is one who is separated. If it was mefarshim, if that was the name of the group, the mefarshim instead of the Prushim, it would mean those who interpret. But it’s not, it’s Prushim, those who are separated.

So, if I look up this word in the Tanakh, I find le’faresh in the sense of to interpret, to explain, and it comes from the meaning of “to divide”, to separate. In later Hebrew, we find this as a very common meaning, where we have this term le’hafrish truma, to separate out the truma, truma is the gift given to the priest. And prushim are the ones who are separated from the uncleanliness of the people. So, if I don’t have it in the Tanakh, I then look to post-biblical Hebrew, post-Tanakh Hebrew, and I see you’ve got the book there.

Keith: Well, this is going to be great because I know you didn’t want to go to the Plus, but I want people to know part of what’s going happen. I received this book a week ago.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: This book is… we’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about Marcus Jastrow.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Nehemia, I’m going to have you explain what this book is, but I’ll tell you where I got it. I got it from a modern-day Pharisee. I called the modern-day Pharisee, and I said, “Hey, listen, I’m studying with Nehemia.” And he said to me, “Did you know Nehemia got his PhD?” This is a modern-day Pharisee told this to me – true story.

Nehemia: Someone that I know, or…?

Keith: And then this modern-day Pharisee said to me, “I’m going to actually see Nehemia at the…” you did a presentation…

Nehemia: Oh, I know who you’re talking about, okay.

Keith: …not long ago.

Nehemia: Yeah, yeah.

Keith: And I said to him, “Well, listen, we’re doing this study.” And he and I were doing some study on some other things, he says, “I’d like to send you a gift. I think this will be very helpful.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: So, he sent this as a gift.

Nehemia: Wow.

Keith: Nehemia, tell people the significance. Now that modern day Pharisee is Dr. David Moster, he’s a rabbi, Dr. David Moster, PhD from Bar Ilan. And he has gotten very excited about what we’re doing. Here’s the great reveal!

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: I was so upset when you said that you found other people to study with before you studied with me, in the previous season. Nehemia told us this right on the set! I said, “I’ve got to find somebody I can study with.” So, I found a modern-day Pharisee, Dr. Moster, who every once in a while, as we roll our sleeves up, comes and brings this kind of thing. Nehemia, can you tell people the significance of this?

Nehemia: So, what Jastrow did, and it’s really interesting as I look at the cover. The modern Hebrew word for dictionary is milon. This is such an old book, it predates the modern word for dictionary, or at least it wasn’t the agreed upon word. He has it as sefer milim, the book of words, as opposed to milon, which also means dictionary.

So, what Jastrow did is he combed through Rabbinical literature, and he documented the usage of every word he could find. Now, this is an important point.

Keith: This is really important.

Nehemia: People think… we were taught this in school and it was wrong; we were taught that dictionaries give you the meaning of a word and they legislate the meaning of a word. So, if you use a word contrary to how the dictionary uses it, you’re misusing it. That’s actually not how language works. Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. Prescriptive means they prescribe, they tell you what the word means, and if you don’t use it that way, you’ve used it wrong. In reality, the way living languages work is they use words in certain ways, and the dictionary describes that. So, dictionaries are really descriptive – even modern dictionaries. And that’s why every year you have new words that are added to the dictionary. I remember when I was a kid, we didn’t have the word “to Google” something, so I remember that actually came into being as a verb, “to Google”.

Keith: Right!

Nehemia: So we have these new words that are created all the time and then the dictionary describes them. So, what he did is he went through all of the Rabbinical literature that he could find at the time.

Keith: That’s amazing.

Nehemia: I mean, it’s a monumental work, and he documented each and every word, and how it was used. Now he’s not always right, he could be describing it wrong, but he’s describing it to the best of his ability.

Keith: This is what we’re going to do with the Plus episode. We’re going to be able to go into this information outside of the Tanakh. Nehemia, we’re going to look at the words, we’re going to do something. I’m hoping, we’re going squeeze now. Here’s my goal – at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, I want you to be sweating out of your jacket!

Nehemia: Okay!

Keith: I want folks to join us and roll up your sleeves with us as we go forward. Now, I have a gift, one last gift before we switch to the Plus.

Nehemia: Before that, can I just say one last thing about Jastrow?

Keith: Yes, absolutely.

Nehemia: The reason Jastrow is so important for our study of Hebrew Matthew…

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: …is that if we accept that Hebrew Matthew was written in the 1st century, or even if you believe it was written in the 14th century, translated from the Greek or old Latin or something, it is closer to the language described in that dictionary than it is to the language of the Tanakh.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Because, the language developed in the Second Temple period, to the point where you read some of the later Dead Sea Scrolls, and you’re like, “This isn’t the Hebrew of Isaiah.” So much so that we have copies of Isaiah where they changed words. They’re coming to the word famously in 1Q Isaiah A, and the scribe says, “No one knows what this word means.” So, he puts in a later Hebrew word.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: So that people will understand Isaiah. He’s updating the language. So that’s why Jastrow’s so important for what we’re doing.

Keith: Well, we’re going to continue on. We’re going to be going to the Plus. Now folks, this is how this works – this is the odd number, so the odd number people become Premium Members at BFA International.

Nehemia: You can remember that because Keith is odd!

Keith: I’m odd! And then the even number is at Nehemia’s Wall. Folks that don’t understand how this works, Nehemia, I’m going to take 30 seconds for you to explain to them. Thirty seconds, why would you want people to become supporters of Nehemias Wall, being trumpeters on the wall?

Nehemia: Yeah. So, I couldn’t do what I’m doing… I had a guy write to me just today, he says, “Where do you have time to do all the research you do?” It’s because you made that donation that I have the time to do all the research you do. It’s because you made that donation that I have the time and the resources to travel and go see the Aleppo Codex, to travel and go examine the Leningrad Codex. To travel and photograph at Oxford University and Cambridge University these manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew, and it’s because of that I have the time and resources to do this program, to pay for editors, and to pay for producers, and to pay for all the expenses and time that goes into it, and I couldn’t do this without you. And the Plus episode… somebody asked me how do I just subscribe to the Plus? On my website you can’t subscribe to the Plus.

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: It’s a gift we give to supporters. If you support my ministry, Makor Hebrew Foundation, we give you access as a way of saying thank you.

Keith: Yes, and at BFA International what we do is we’re asking you to become Study Partners with us, not only for this, but for everything else we do. The way that you do that is you become a Premium Member at BFA International, look right there, at BFAInternational.com, become a Premium Member.

Now, let me tell you something we’re going to do, as a gift we did. I am so excited about what Nehemias has provided over the previous 52 episodes. BFA made a big investment, you didn’t even hear about this.

Nehemia: We may have to edit this out!

Keith: No, don’t edit this out!

Nehemia: What’s going on here!

Keith: Right now, what I want you to do is, if you’ve got your mobile phone, I want you to go, whether Android or Apple, go to the Apple Store or go to the Android Store, and you’re going to see a free app, and it’s featured on the top. Hebrew Gospel Pearls are free episodes to the public for all our folks around the world, Nehemia, that only use their phones.

We now have this series, the public episodes, available on an app. BFA Flicks, or Biblical Foundations Academy, it’s there, it’s a gift, and it’s a thank you to you. You kept raising the bar, Nehemia, we thought we better raise the bar too to make it available to everyone that we can. Folks, that’s what we’re asking you to do, become a Premium Member at BFA and even if you can’t, you can go to the app and get the free information.

Nehemia, anything else before we pray at the end of this? And I want to thank you again for taking the 10 minutes. It was well worth it to hear your journey as Dr. Gordon, and that’s how we’re going to treat you. Anything you’d like to say before we pray?

Nehemia: I’m just excited about getting to the whole issue that we’re going to get to in the Plus section. I can’t wait to get to that.

Keith: Pray for us.

Nehemia: Alright. Father thank you so much for being with me on this journey and making me succeed on this way. I couldn’t have done this; I didn’t do this through might. I didn’t do this through my intelligence, I did this through Your mercy, Your grace, Your love, guiding me on the way, keeping my feet on that path day and night, giving me the energy, the perseverance, the tenacity. I want You to give that, Father, I ask, to everyone who seeks You, that You put it in their heart this ability to hunt down Your word and hunt down Your truth. Amen.

Keith: Father, thank you so much for vision, provision, the vision of even meeting Nehemia way back, so many years ago, and even as I first interacted with him, I just thought, “Boy, the world needs to know who he is, and who You are through him, and what You’ve allowed him to do.” Thank you that I get a chance to, in a small way, to be with him on this journey, thank you so much for all of the people, all of the people who put their hands to the plow for Hebrew Gospel Pearls, you know who you are, we thank Yehovah for you. We thank You for the provision and the resources, we thank You for our Study Partners, and even for all of the people around the world who will get a chance to access this information freely without having to do anything. Just simply be able to see this information, inspiration, and revelation, we ask Your blessing, Your protection, Your power, and Your peace as we go forward in this project, in Your name. 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!