Hebrew Gospel Pearls #30 – The Road to Rome

In this episode of Hebrew Gospel Pearls, The Road to Rome, Nehemia shares about using X-rays to uncover the fingerprints of the most important New Testament manuscript at the Vatican, Keith announces a unique opportunity to learn Biblical Hebrew, and the dynamic duo zeros in on a word that either provides obscurity or clarity to Yeshua’s message.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Transcript

Hebrew Gospel Pearls #30 – The Road to Rome

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: So, I’m going to the Vatican Keith, and we’ll be using a technology called micro-X-ray fluorescence. We’re going to zap the codex with X-rays, and that will reveal a fingerprint.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, episode 30! We’ve made it to 30 episodes, Keith! Today we’ll be talking about Matthew chapter 5 verses 25 to 26. And… what are you… you’re scowling.

Keith: I’m protesting! I’m not saying a word until he talks.

Nehemia: Okay. So, we had some really big news this morning. And look, we’re pre-taping this so…

Keith: I want you to tell people that; this is the first time you finally said that.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: And it’s important that you said that.

Nehemia: So, the morning we’re actually taping this, I received an e-mail confirming that… I’ve been working on some projects since I finished my PhD, and one of those projects is just continuing the research that I’ve been doing.

And look, you guys, the audience, you’ve come along with us on this journey. You’re on the journey with us, and you’re developing your skills. You’re learning about textual criticism, you’re learning about Hebrew manuscripts, you’re learning Hebrew concepts, about Hebrew verbs and roots and things.

Well, we on our end, we’re continuing to develop our skills as well. And one of the things I’m doing to sharpen my iron is, I’ve been going out and engaging with different scholars and research projects. And one of those projects was a proposal that I submitted to the Vatican. And specifically…

Keith: The Vatican?

Nehemia: The Vatican.

Keith: In Rome?

Nehemia: Well, it’s actually its own country – the Vatican City State. It’s inside of Rome, yes. And they have, at the Vatican… you know, I’ve had the opportunity to examine the most important manuscripts of the Tanakh. And by examine, I mean I sat down with a microscope and was able to examine them for hours: the Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex, Damascus Crown and Sassoon 1053.

And I thought, “I need to expand this and also look at some of the Greek manuscripts, if I have that opportunity.” And so, I now have the opportunity. By the time this is broadcast, God willing, I will have examined Codex Vaticanus using cutting edge technology. And when I actually sat down to look at what are the questions for Codex Vaticanus that I could answer using the techniques available to me – because there’s some questions you may want to answer that there’s no way to answer – but using the techniques available to me, what are some of the questions that could be answered? And one of the things that jumped off the page immediately is this debate that’s raging right now in the journal called NTS, New Testament Studies. There have been a series of articles in this journal about these symbols in the margin of Codex Vaticanus, specifically a symbol called the obelisk. And when I saw that, I’m like, “Wow!”

Keith: Can we put an image up of the obelisk that you’re talking about?

Nehemia: Absolutely!

Keith: Can we do that?

Nehemia: Yeah. We’ll throw that up here.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: And what we’re seeing here on the screen is a very famous passage, it’s the passage where Paul in one of his epistles tells the women to be quiet in church. And someone in 2017 published an article in the Journal of New Testament Studies arguing that those symbols in the margin are an obelisk symbol. Now what is an obelisk symbol? The audience, if they’ve seen the series I did with Michael Rood and John Lorquette…

Keith: Stop and tell us about that series.

Nehemia: That was about John 6:4. Now, Michael had this idea that John 6:4, he was arguing, was added. And my position was that I don’t know if it was added or not, but let’s go look at that evidence that could support Michael’s position or undermine Michael’s position. So, we looked, and we found that there were these manuscripts that had the obelisk symbol in the margin. And what that symbol indicates is that the scribe that put that symbol there, he thought that verse was added.

It’s really beautiful – in Codex Vaticanus, there are cases where the obelisk symbol is accompanied by a note. And the note in Greek says, “The obelisk is here.” And this is in the Old Testament, in The Prophets in particular, and what they would do… Origen, in the 2nd century, originally added this obelisk, and then the Codex Vaticanus later copied this into the Prophets portion. And the note says, “Obelisk indicates words that are not in the Hebrew.” So, those are words that are dubious because they’re in the Greek, but not the Hebrew, meaning they’re doubtful.

Now, the debate in the New Testament is whether the symbols that are identified as obelisk are actually obelisk or whether they’re something else. And that debate has been going back and forth, and up until now there really hasn’t been a way to answer that. The critics say, “Well, wait a minute. How do we even know the original scribe wrote those symbols in the margin?” But when I looked at this issue, I slid right into the issue. I was completely prepared, because I had spent months researching the John 6:4 obelisks, and I’m like, “I know all about obelisks!”

So, we look here at Vaticanus, and you see those symbols in the margin. There are two symbols, one is called a distigme, which really means just two dots; and the other is either a paragraphos, or an obelisk, and that’s the debate. The claim of one scholar is that yes, these two symbols together indicate that the scribe who wrote Vaticanus knew that these two verses were added.

The counter argument… and I don’t have a position; I don’t know. The counter argument that’s in the academic literature right now, in the same journal, NTS, is that we don’t even know who wrote those symbols in the margin. They could have been written centuries later by a different scribe.

So, I’m going to the Vatican, Keith, and we’ll be using a technology called micro-X-ray fluorescence. We’re going to zap the codex with X-rays, and that will reveal a fingerprint that will be able to tell, possibly, it could be inconclusive, the results, I don’t know, but we’ll be able to at least test the hypothesis and ask the question – is the scribe who wrote the main text the same scribe that wrote those symbols in the margin? And so, it’s really an amazing honor to be part of this research.

But look, this is an international effort; it’s not just me. I don’t know how to operate the X-ray machine. There are very competent and sophisticated scientists who are doing this. But what they need is someone from a textual perspective to pose the question and formulate it in a way that can be answered by their techniques and then help interpret the results. So, I’m working with this team at the Vatican – the team actually is from Berlin – but we’re going to the Vatican and we’re going to be examining Codex Vaticanus. It was approved this morning, the proposal to do that, so I’m very excited about that.

Keith: So, people get mad at me, “Keith, you stray off topic, you talk about other things.” I’m going to take a minute and talk about this. Why did I keep my sleeves unrolled? Because I wasn’t going to roll them up unless Nehemia showed us that he’s rolling up his sleeves. Now, physically he doesn’t have to roll up his sleeves, but I’m going to keep rolling up the sleeves in order to keep asking you guys to roll up your sleeves. So, here’s what I decided on the way in, this morning; did I know? This morning, did I know?

Nehemia: No. I didn’t know when I woke up!

Keith: So, this morning as I’m on my way here, I’m thinking to myself, “Oh my goodness. What can we do to continue to roll up our sleeves and to raise the bar?” So, Nehemia a year ago did something. A year ago, I was visiting him and as I was visiting him, he said, “You know, Keith.” I don’t know if you know. How many people have asked you, Nehemia, for you to teach them Biblical Hebrew?

Nehemia: Quite a lot.

Keith: How many people have said to you, “Teach me Biblical Hebrew.” How many?

Nehemia: I don’t know, hundreds.

Keith: Ten? What, one hundred?

Nehemia: Hundreds.

Keith: Yeah?

Nehemia: Probably, over the years.

Keith: So, there was one person that you did actually create an entire curriculum for. Do you remember anything about that and who that was?

Nehemia: I do.

Keith: Can you tell? I’m not going to say it, I’d like you to tell it, because this is…

Nehemia: Reggie White.

Keith: Yes?

Nehemia: Reggie White, who was a good friend of yours. And you introduced him to me, or me to him. And he wanted to learn Biblical Hebrew, and we worked for about nine months. And he went from a background of basically knowing the Alef-Bet to being able to read by himself, which is pretty cool.

Keith: That was one person. So, you notice folks, he didn’t mention the person before Reggie, an entire curriculum.

Nehemia: That was Keith!

Keith: Can you tell me about that, Nehemia? Now, I’m going to force you on this, because we’re going to raise the bar for our Study Partners. What did you do? How tough were you on me? What did you do?

Nehemia: I was… well, I mean, look, I was a lot less laid back than I am these days.

Keith: To say the least!

Nehemia: You know, the way they teach language, let’s say at Hebrew University, which is where I had studied, is a very rigid linguistic approach. They don’t focus on vocabulary. What they focus on is – and this is very typical of universities, I think, all over the world – they focus on grammar.

You can always look up the words in the dictionary, but the grammar… I mean, how do you know even what to look up? So, they focus on teaching you grammar, and it was a pretty rigid approach. I mean… yeah. But you did really well!

Keith: I don’t care about me doing well! It was a pretty rigid approach!

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Last year, Nehemia and I were in the car – and this happens with us – we usually find ourselves either in a whirlpool, but because of COVID, we haven’t had chance to be in a whirlpool together for like… in a whirlpool, meaning we’d sit and talk. This is how we did our book, A Prayer to Our Father.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: The revelation came in the whirlpool!

Nehemia: Some of it!

Keith: It did come in the whirlpool, don’t you remember?

Nehemia: There was some pretty intense… yeah.

Keith: But hey, folks! Bear with me here. About a year ago, Nehemia had me in his car and he said, “So Keith, I’d like you to consider something.” “What’s that?” “I’d like you to consider to go in and up the game a little bit more with Biblical Hebrew.” And he suggested – and it brought me to a place of fear – he suggested that I hook up with who?

Nehemia: Rabbi Dr. David Moster.

Keith: Why did you say that? He’s a person who was on Hebrew Voices.

Nehemia: Well, I had him on my Hebrew Voices podcasts, and he was offering classes in Biblical Hebrew. Here’s a guy who… I mean, let’s just be honest here – there’s a lot of people out there who are offering courses in Biblical Hebrew who don’t really have a mastery of Biblical Hebrew themselves. And so here is a guy who really does, who’s a very competent and serious scholar, who’s willing to engage with people who aren’t from his perspective, aren’t part of his denominational structure, or aren’t even Jewish, and he’s willing to engage with those people and teach them, and I thought, “This is a great opportunity! I don’t want to teach you more.”

Keith: No. You don’t want to teach anything anymore, that’s fine! So, Dr. Moster says, “Okay.” So, we’ve been meeting for… now it’s been a year. And halfway through that year, Dr. Moster said, “So, I heard about this thing that Nehemia is doing about these Hebrew Gospels. Talk to me about that,” he says.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: So, I tell him about what’s happening. He says, “Can we take a look at those together?” So, he and I have been looking at those together.

Nehemia: Wow.

Keith: And Nehemia, he is so impressed with the work that you have done, that has just been given to our Study Partners. He’s looking at this too, and sometimes he’ll say, “Listen, this guy, Ben Hur, he didn’t point that correctly.” So, he’s found these things!

Nehemia: About that… we’ve noticed that too.

Keith: Of course, and I tell him that. But here’s the reason that I’m saying we’re rolling up another level. On the way here, BFA made another decision.

Nehemia: And it’s possible something got corrupted in the files.

Keith: Yeah. Absolutely.

Nehemia: We’re not blaming Ben Hur.

Keith: Absolutely. Folks, our free members that have not gotten a chance to be in the role-up-the-sleeves Study Partners, we made another decision in the spirit of Nehemia raising the bar. For those that want to learn the first aspects of Biblical Hebrew, it’s been checked by Dr. Moster, originally taught by Nehemia, and now what we’re doing is making those first seven episodes absolutely free. The first seven lessons of Biblical Hebrew – free, as of today.

Nehemia: I actually have an idea that just came to me, and I don’t know…

Keith: Wait! Did you hear my announcement?

Nehemia: I heard, it’s a pretty cool announcement.

Keith: No, blow the…

Nehemia: Tu-do! Tu-do! Where can they go and do that?

Keith: They can go to BFA, front page, they can go to Hebrew, and Biblical Hebrew. And if you’re a free member, the first seven of, I think it’s 30 different lessons, the first seven are free. You’ll learn some consonants, and some vowels, absolutely free! Go ahead, what’s your idea that you got right here?

Nehemia: Well, it’s what you just said. So, you’re teaching Biblical Hebrew using… or let’s say ancient Hebrew, using Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew as the base text, is what you’re saying. That’s pretty awesome.

Keith: Actually, we use a different book for that.

Nehemia: Oh.

Keith: But I don’t want to confuse the issue.

Nehemia: Alright.

Keith: The reason that I’m bringing this up right now, Nehemia, is that people are studying with us, they’re rolling up their sleeves, I’m rolling up my sleeves, you’re rolling up your sleeves. Let’s get to the Biblical Hebrew through the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and go to the next verse. But I just want to say, Nehemia…

Nehemia: Yeah?

Keith: It’s not a small thing – folks, be in prayer for us, because this is not the only opportunity. Nehemia, there’s other things you’re doing with these other scholars…

Nehemia: But those are things I can’t talk about right now.

Keith: No, you can’t talk about them, but they’re really, really significant.

Nehemia: This one has been approved, and look I’ll be really honest, I don’t know what’s going to happen with COVID, and with other kinds of situations.

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: So, it’s possible that when this episode is broadcast, I will not have gone already, and in that case, we’re going to edit this out; this only stays in if it’s… I don’t talk about what I’m working on until it’s already something that’s been done in the past.

Keith: But we forced you on this one.

Nehemia: Well, we can remove it in editing before its broadcast if it doesn’t happen or if it’s delayed. It could be delayed… I could have a ticket to go tomorrow and there’s a new COVID lockdown from the Omega variant, or whatever they’re going to use afterwards, when they run through the letters of the Greek alphabet. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

Keith: Permission to quote Lynell this morning?

Nehemia: Yes.

Keith: She said this, as we’re sitting there, she said, “God has done a miracle. This is a miracle, all these things in the process.” She said, “But you know what else? Nehemia’s prepared himself for that miracle.” You have prepared yourself for the miracle, the door opened, and you were ready. And folks, we want you to be prepared to be in what we’re calling Hebrew Gospel Pearls, study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD, from Bar Ilan. I’m calling it The Roll-Up-The-Sleeves series. Now can we get going?

Nehemia: Well, I want to share one last thing.

Keith: Oh! More?

Nehemia: So, last night I was at Michael Rood’s house; we’re here in the studios that he built. I was at his house, and I shared with him how… and I didn’t have the approval at that point, I just knew that I’d submitted a proposal, and the basis for that proposal, the preparation for that proposal was… it was actually really many things, but from the Greek New Testament perspective, it was all the research I’d done on John 6:4. And I shared that with him, and how that had potentially opened the door to going to the Vatican to examine Codex Vaticanus. And Michael knows what Codex Vaticanus is… and Michael cried…

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: … when he heard that.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: He had tears in his eyes; it was a very moving.

Keith: Amazing.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Thank you, Michael, thank you. He keeps asking… you know what I love about Michael? He knows the right questions.

Nehemia: Yeah. And he’s not afraid to ask them.

Keith: He’s not afraid to ask them.

Nehemia: Or hear what the answers are.

Keith: Here we go!

Nehemia: Alright.

Keith: What verses are we in?

Nehemia: Matthew 5:25 to 26!

Keith: Okay folks, let’s study with…

Nehemia: I’m going to read this. “Az amar Yeshua le’talmidav,” “Then Yeshua said to his disciples,” and then here we have two different readings that we’ll get to in the discussion – “re’eh”, or “ye’ot”, or “ya’ut”, three different readings I suppose, “she’temaher leratzot sone’kha be’lechtecha imo ba’derech pen yimsor otcha la’shofet, ve’zeh ha’shofet yimsorcha la’avod,” or “la’eved latet otcha le’bet ha’sohar. Be’emet ani omer lecha, lo titzeh mi’sham ad tinaten pruta achrona.” “See”, or “It is appropriate that you quickly appease your enemy”, or “the one who hates you…”

Keith: Stop! You can’t translate from there; you missed the first three words.

Nehemia: Oh, I said, “Then Yeshua said to his disciples.” I read that before.

Keith: Oh, earlier?

Nehemia: Yeah. “Then Yeshua said to his disciples, ‘See,’” or, “it is appropriate that you quickly appease the one who hates you when you walk with him on the way, lest he turn you over to the judge, and this judge turns you over to the servant,” or “to serve, to put you in,” or “to give you into the prison. In truth I tell you, you will not get out from there until you give your last pruta”, which is like a penny or something.

So, the first question we have here is this word, “re’eh”, which literally means “see”, but that’s only in five of the manuscripts – Z, C, N, T, V. We’ve seen in the past, those five manuscripts are a single group, and they often have readings that are contrary to all the other manuscripts. We’ve seen that in a number of episodes, and in this case we have the manuscripts that have the different reading – E, F, D, G, K, Q, W, A, G, X, Y, Gamma, B, L, and R. So, all the other manuscripts that exist, that are legible on this word, have the word Yud-Alef-Vav-Tav. Now what is Yud-Alef-Vav-Tav?

One possibility is that it is from the verb Alef-Vav-Tav, which means “to agree”. And if it’s from the verb Alef-Vav-Tav, it means something like, “let him agree”, or “let him be satisfied”, and that actually makes no sense in the verse. And when we first discussed this verse, I said, “Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. We’ll just ignore what it says all those manuscripts, and we’ll read it as, ‘See that you quickly appease the one who hates you.’” And what I was doing was “Howarding the verse”, as you call it.

And then, look, we have in the Greek a phrase that literally means… the word eunoeo, which means “to be agreeable”. So, what could have happened here is it originally had “re’eh”, “see that you quickly”, and then we have this process that we’ve seen, and that Howard talked about, which is a process of adapting the Hebrew to match the Greek. The people knew the Greek text, or they knew the Latin text based on the Greek text, and when they read it in Hebrew Matthew the scribe may have corrected it. And we have examples where there’re smoking guns, where the verse was different than the Greek, and they wrote above the line the word that matches the Greek. Howard didn’t know that, but we found examples of that.

So, something from that root meaning “to be agreeable” makes a lot of sense as an adaptation to the Greek. But in the context, it doesn’t really make sense in Hebrew. Ye’ot? It just doesn’t make sense. In other words, the translation would be, “Then Yeshua said to his disciples, ‘He will be agreeable that you quickly appease the one who hates you.’” Well, who’s he? Maybe it’s supposed to be “it”, but what’s the “it”? It’s not so clear. And I was ready to dismiss this as someone who’s trying to correct the text according to the Greek even when it really didn’t make sense in the Hebrew form that was put in there.

Nelson, who did a study with us, when we prepared, he pointed out, “Well Nehemia, there’s this other word, an obscure word that Jastrow has… and let’s back up here. So, “ya’ut”, “ye’ot”, is from the root Alef-Vav-Tav. How do we know it’s from Alef-Vav-Tav? Well, it’s what’s called a hollow verb, or it could be a hollow verb, let’s put it that way. Meaning, it has these letters that are problematic. Hebrew has roots that are made-up of three letters, that’s the standard idea in Hebrew. It’s called the triliteral root theory, we’ve talked about that.

A full normal verb, a regular verb, has all three letters like “to guard” is “lishmor”, Shin-Mem-Resh. In every form of the verb you have those three letters. But then there are hollow verbs, and in hollow verbs some of letters drop in some forms of the verb. Like, “halach” means he went, “lech” means go, what happened to the Hey? It dropped. “Telech” is “you will go”, where is the Hey? It dropped.

Then you have “natan”, “to give”, and this is a beautiful example. So, “to give” is “latet”, and only one letter of the three letters appears in the form “to give”.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s a hollow verb that loses two of the letters in some forms. The name Netanyahu is from that verb; “natan”, to give, it means “Yehovah gave” or “gives”.

So, “ye’ot”, this word, Yud-Alef-Vav-Tav, maybe it’s not “ye’ot”, maybe it is “ya’ut”, which is a hollow verb from the root Yud-Alef-Hay or Yud-Alef-Yud. And that’s a very obscure word. As far as I can tell, it only appears in the Jerusalem Talmud. We looked it up in something called the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, and in other sources, and we can see that “ya’ut…” here it is and let me show you it in Jastrow. Here’s “ya’ut,” and he translates it as, “propriety; right; properly”, and then it also takes on the meaning of “it is right.”

Now, we have it in the Targum on Psalms, but that’s Aramaic. The Targum Onkelos on Deuteronomy has “ya’ut”, but then we also only have it in the Jerusalem Talmud in Hebrew texts. So “ya’ut” is a word that means “it is proper”, so that could be what the intention is here. In other words, if we go back and look at the text, we would translate this, “And Yeshua said to his disciples, ‘It is proper that you quickly appease the one who hates you.’” Now that then also has some correspondence to the Greek, “it is agreeable”, “be agreeable to your enemy quickly.” You could see how that’s connected there.

But both are possibilities. One of them is in five manuscripts, “see”, and then, “it is proper”, that’s in all the other manuscripts.

Keith: Okay.

Nehemia: Now, one of the interesting things here is, it says, “to the one who hates you”, “sona’akha.” What do we have in the Greek?

Keith: It says, “make friends quickly with your opponent.”

Nehemia: “Your opponent.” Okay.

Keith: Now by the way, it does something interesting. It says, “make friends quickly with your opponent at law, while you are with him on the way.”

Nehemia: Ahh! Such a big difference!

Keith: It’s a big difference, yes.

Nehemia: So, we have here in Greek the word antidikos, which means something like “your accuser”. And it’s interesting, the Latin has adversio, “your adversary”, and “adversary” also can be “accuser”. So, we’ll look it up in LSJ, in the dictionary here, and we have “opponent or adversary in a lawsuit”. And it could also be “the defendant” or “the plaintiff”, so it’s specifically a legal context. So, what the Greek is saying is you’re walking with your opponent…

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: … in a lawsuit on your way to court; settle out of court before you reach court. That’s what the Greek is saying. That’s not what the Hebrew is saying. In the Hebrew, you’re walking on the road, on the highway, or in some kind of travel, and your enemy is with you. And you want to resolve whatever issues you have with your enemy while you’re still walking with him before the journey ends, because when the journey ends, he may go and turn you over to a judge. And maybe he’ll lie about you, or maybe he’ll tell the truth and you really deserve some kind of punishment; but work it out with him. It’s not that you’re on your way to court, which is what the Greek is clearly indicating. Here it’s somebody who hates you; you’re walking with him and figure it out with him before you end up having to deal with it before a judge.

Keith: Now, Nehemia, when we go into the Plus, we’re going to try to figure out how we can make some decisions about this.

Nehemia: Oh wow! I see it’s time for the Plus. You’ve got to be kidding me! I’m like, “We just started here!”

Keith: No, no. We did this on purpose.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: Because I wanted our public people to see a little bit of the process. Now we go a little bit deeper, a lot deeper, in terms of taking apart some of those words, making some of those decisions, looking at the manuscripts, et cetera. But as we do that, we want people to consider joining us, rolling up their sleeves with us. Tell us how they can do that at Nehemia’s Wall.

Nehemia: So, we have NehemiasWall.com, you can go and donate to Makor Hebrew Foundation, then you get access to what we call our Support Team Studies. Those are really just a faint way of saying thank you to those who support my ministry, what I do. They give me the ability to prepare the research we’ve done here; they give me an ability to do all kinds of research that I’m doing.

Keith: A lot of things.

Nehemia: A lot of things I can’t even talk about until it’s already done.

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: But I want to share the fruits of that both with the public and with those who support, give just a little bit extra to those who support, so that I can share the rest with the public. That’s what allows me to do it.

Keith: Excellent. So, we have all sorts of things for our folks that are free, all sorts of things that are looking at the public. How many episodes you said? This was 30?

Nehemia: Thirty episodes, which means we actually did 60 episodes, because there’s a regular (a public) and a Plus with every episode. So, we done 60 episodes in Hebrew Gospel Pearls! Wow!

Keith: That’s amazing! That’s amazing! Well, we’re going to move to the Plus.

Nehemia: Let’s do it; let’s move to the Plus. Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for opening up the opportunities that You’ve opened up for me to research these ancient manuscripts, to research Your word and to research these texts, and to share that with people. To share that in ways that even regular people who have never studied Hebrew, never studied Greek, they can understand, and they can be a part of this process and get a deeper understanding. I’m so grateful that You’ve allowed me to be in the position to do that and given me the skills to do it. Amen.

Keith: Father, thank you so much that I’ve been able to witness what I call a miracle, what seems to be a miracle in so many ways, Father, with Nehemia. And to see that continue is humbling and overwhelming and exciting. And yet we also lift him up, we lift Lynell up, we lift everything that You’re doing in their life, and their family, before You. We know this, You provide a vision and You also provide pro-vision. So, Father, I pray that You’d open the gates of heaven for Makor and Nehemia’s Wall, for this situation, Father, to continue to support not only what he’s doing for this year, but to continue to support for the things that are being discussed that are world changing. We ask it 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!


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Watch Hebrew Gospel Pearls PLUS #30!

4 thoughts on “Hebrew Gospel Pearls #30 – The Road to Rome

  1. I am concerned with the teaching of Judaism that one cannot cling to God because Hashem is unknowable and unapproachable. They say you must cling to a tzadik who is close to God. The logic is wrong . Abraham was called the friend of God . God even spoke to Haggar and to Noah. If one cant keep the commandment to cling to God then everyone including Abraham didnt know God either and you didnt as a nation heard Gods voice at Mt Sinai. Do you see those who say that want to be worshipped and not God . Their logic is against the rules of Hillel and the thirteen rules of Ishmael. What do you think?

  2. Great news that Nehemia is to examine the Vaticanus!
    I hope he will also have a very close look, aided by the specialists there, at whether it is genuine! From the time of Erasmus to this day many have doubted its supposed dating and authenticity. Some called it corrupt and fabricated. The MS is full of errors compared to the received text from hundreds of manuscripts. The Bible is mixed up with apocryphal books. Vatican has always been nervous and secretive about it and scholarship.
    It would be good to have a thorough forensic test and dating of the vellum, ink as well as corrections, and investigation of provenance. From the 700s to 1400 no one in Italy knew Greek. Then Greek scholars and the Roman emperor from Constantinople started coming to Europe to discuss theology and military help. Latin Vulgate was not up to the task, faced with highly educated Greek scholars.

  3. In the ‘spiritual’ sense, who is our Judge and whose Court matters most? We know that is Elohim. Maybe that verse is teaching (as I believe Yeshua was known as The Teacher) when a Jew and a Gentile are walking together, make sure what you do and what you say is conducive to peace?
    Zechariah 8:16 “These are the things you are to do: speak the truth to each other; in your courts, administer justice that is true and conducive to peace.”

I look forward to reading your comment!