Hebrew Gospel Pearls #31 – Search for Yourself

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: Now here’s the most controversial of all of them, “Step number four, read the KJV.” What’s the KJV, Nehemia?

Nehemia: Keith Johnson Version?

Keith: So, you do watch my stuff! You do know what’s going…

Nehemia: I heard you made that up.

Keith: You do!

Keith: Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls episode number thirty…

Nehemia: …one.

Keith: We are studying with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD from Bar Ilan. People are rolling up their sleeves, Nehemia, this is really good news. We had a couple of comments though; some people that got a little confused. They had a little bit of confusion. Can you explain… the question was, “Why would I want to become a Study Partner?” In other words, they’re asking the question, “What are you guys doing behind the wall that would make me, as a public person, want to do that?”

So, I want to give you first a chance to explain to our folks that have been listening for 31 episodes. They still haven’t decided to go into the next section. Can you just tell them a little bit about the types of things that we’re able to do with you as we’re in the Plus episode?

Nehemia: Well, we’re continuing the conversation and we’re going deeper. We’ve had episodes where we don’t even get out of the first word in the public episode! And then we only get to continue the conversation, really, over in the Plus episode. And there’s some things where in advance we say, “That’s kind of a little bit more controversial. That’s a little bit maybe advanced for some people, let’s save that for the Plus episode.”

Keith: Why do you do that? Why do you want to save it for them? Is it because you just have more time?

Nehemia: Partly. Frankly it is because I have more time, yeah. But it’s also a matter of… my thought is there are some people who maybe don’t want all that information. They want a certain amount, and they’re willing to put in 30 minutes or 45 minutes and listen and learn something. And the people who want to go deeper have the opportunity to do that.

Keith: Yeah. There’s a verse that I memorized, “Now, the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians,” because they searched the Scriptures to see if what Nehemia said is true…. what Paul said is true.

Nehemia: You know what I’ve always loved about that verse? About the Thessalonians and the Bereans? It’s that they didn’t search the Scriptures the way it formulates it, to see that what Paul said was true, but whether what Paul said was true.

Keith: That’s right; that’s right.

Nehemia: They’re opening up the possibility, maybe it’s not true.

Keith: Maybe it’s not.

Nehemia: So, they weren’t proof texting. That’s this thing people do today, they proof text, “We have this doctrine, now let’s find the all the verses that support our doctrine.” Instead of, “Let’s look at all the verses in the text and then determine what the doctrine should be.” And so, I love that that’s what the Bereans were doing. The Bereans were doing what we’re doing. They were looking to find out, “Okay, let’s look at all the text and see if this really plays out,” rather than proof texting to prove what you already believe.

Keith: So, I want to give my reason why I think people should do it…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: … and that is that I have been experiencing this with you since 2002. That’s a lot of time! And the way that it has changed me, Nehemia, is for me to be able… I used to get so frustrated. I’d ask you a question, you’d say, “Well, have you searched?” “Hey Nehemia, can you tell me such and such?” And you’d say, “Well, go here.” And I used to get frustrated. This was back in the day before quick little… these were the days where you had to…

Nehemia: My wife goes through this every morning! We wake up in the morning and we do a Bible study, and she’ll say… she has her little notebook, a little pink notebook, and she’s writing. She says, “Okay, so Nehemia, what’s such and such?” “Let’s see what the Tanakh says.” “Can’t you just tell me?” “No, let Yehovah tell you.” And we read it in the Tanakh.

Keith: Yeah.

Nehemia: And… is that not what happens? She’s sitting back there confirming!

Keith: Yeah!

Nehemia: And it really comes from my guiding philosophy in life; it comes from this motto that comes from sometime around the 8th century. There was this Karaite teacher, and he lived at a time… and what I love about this is I experienced this myself. He lived in a time where he was told, “You have to accept the interpretation of these great rabbis, of these great sages. It doesn’t matter if you disagree, you have to accept their interpretation.” I was told that! And that was the reality, that was the legal reality in his time; in my reality it was the religious social reality. Meaning, you could actually get executed back then if you didn’t agree with that.

And he came up with this motto which was, “Search well in the Scripture and do not blindly rely on anyone’s opinion.” And the point there was that it’s the exact polar opposite of what Rabbinical Judaism teaches… as far as I know, it’s the polar opposite of what Catholicism teaches, which is, “You have to obey what the Pope teaches and what the church teaches, and you have to not only obey it but believe it.” Or at least certain things that they teach.

And here he says, “No, follow what God says in the Scripture.” So, I don’t want to be that teacher who just says, “I’m the Bible answer man. Here are the answers; accept everything I say.” Don’t except anything I say. Go and search it for yourself, and if I’m wrong, follow the truth. And I do that with the audience. I do that with my own wife, because she needs to see it for herself, and it’s so much more powerful when she sees it for herself than, “Well, my husband told me this is what God says.”

Keith: Okay. So, let me finish this part of it. Thank you, because you’ve walked that out, and I’ve applied that in my life, and people get very frustrated about it. But in our entire study process there’s a saying… And look, I need a minute for this, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Take your time.

Keith: This is my first minute! There’s a saying that I’m operating by, and it was in our kitchen even as a kid, and it said, “Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, and they eat for a lifetime.” And we’re not giving fish in this roll-up-the-sleeve series.

Nehemia: Right.

Keith: We’re teaching people to fish. So, someone, they asked the question, “What is it that you guys are doing in there?” And so, there are five things that we’re doing in the preparation study guide. I want to read these five things. The first thing we asked to do, five steps. Look, I’m so excited, I’ve got my little, my little thing. You get to download it; you have it there.

Nehemia: Now, where can they download it? Where do they download that from?

Keith: From BFA international, on the front. But this is only for our Study Partners. So I’m showing the people who are not yet Study Partners what the five steps are. Can I read them? And I’d like you to evaluate.

Nehemia: Sure, okay. I’ve actually never heard this before.

Keith: He doesn’t look at my stuff.

Nehemia: I’m nervous!

Keith: You haven’t watched my series!

Nehemia: You have a series?

Keith: I’ve got many series!

Nehemia: I know you do! All right.

Keith: Step one: Read your favorite English Red Letter translation of verses 27 to 30. This is what we’re about ready to do. We’ve got two verses, two episodes, for this one PDF. Step one: Read your favorite English Red Letter translation of verses 27 to 30 and then compare and contrast it with George Howard’s English translation provided. Take note of the major and minor differences.

Help me Nehemia, why is that important? That they would have English translations and then compare them to the translation of Howard. Why might that be important?

Nehemia: I think it’s important always to work with… unless you’re reading the original text or the text in the original language, and even then, I think it’s important to compare different translations, because every translation is someone’s interpretation. And what are the possible interpretations? That’s important to know. You may read something and say, “Well it’s obvious it means this,” and you might be right. But what are other possible ways that may be less obvious, but maybe they’re true? Or they’re more obvious to somebody else. And so, it’s important to see what all the possibilities are when you read a text.

Keith: Step number two: Read through, and this is a gift from…

Nehemia: Are these the “five smooth stones”?

Keith: No.

Nehemia: Absolutely.

Keith: “Stone number one!”

Nehemia: “Stone number two!”

Keith: I wish you would tell that story but I’m not going to let you tell it!

Nehemia: All right, go on!

Keith: I’ve got to finish. Step number two: Read through the vowel-pointed Hebrew interlinear manuscript – which we call “the eclectic text” – even if you are not able to read the Hebrew words, we have provided a literal English translation for your consideration.

This is one of the greatest gifts that I have been given, the fact that we… well, you wouldn’t do this, you stopped me. You said, “You’ve got to do your own translation.” But as far as giving us the pointed text, it is huge. Okay, that is step number two.

Step number three: Read through what I’m calling the “Red Alerts”. Now Nehemia doesn’t know this, it’s kind of a setup. I’ll take one of these Red Alerts…

Nehemia: What are the Red Alerts?

Keith: …and then I’ll throw it to Nehemia, and he’ll do the “tap-tap”, and so you’re getting a chance to study with Nehemia. Read through the red alerts and add more meat to the matter by expanding the possible meaning of these words using your favorite Bible research tools. One of our Bible research tools is you.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: Amen! Do you mind? Isn’t that what you’re saying?

Nehemia: Sure, no, I’m honored…

Keith: You’re offering that.

Nehemia: I’m honored to do that.

Keith: Okay. Now here’s the most controversial of all of them, step number 4: Read the KJV. What’s the KJV, Nehemia?

Nehemia: Keith Johnson Version?

Keith: So, you do watch my stuff! You do know what’s going…

Nehemia: I heard you made that up.

Keith: You do! Tell me you watch my stuff!

Nehemia: I don’t. But I’ve heard you say that before!

Keith: Read the Keith Johnson version and consider creating your own translation based on your encounter with the Red Letters. I want to stop for a second.

Nehemia: That’s beautiful.

Keith: This is not really my translation. What it is, is taking all of the resources that I have, including you. Dr. Moster has looked at this, a number of people have looked at it, Study Partners in the past have looked at it, and what’s beautiful about that is that I feel the confidence to say, “Here’s an option.”

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: But guess what? There is an “NJV” … the Nehemia…

Nehemia: Johnson version?

Keith: I’m sorry, “NGV”.

Nehemia: “NGV”.

Keith: It’s not as cool as “KJV” you got to admit! That’s kind of hot!

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Keith: Okay, last thing and the most important, back to Dr. Mark: Reflect on how you might apply these Red Letters into your life. So again, that’s what the study guide is for people that want to do that. You go to BFA International, the Red-Letter series. Unfortunately, it was free for everybody up through episode 19. But in the roll-up-your-sleeves series, it is now only for those people that are Study Partners. I would like to encourage people to become that for us, because as they do that, they’re able to reap more benefits from our time together.

Now, we’re about to go into two verses in this episode, folks. I’m going to actually ask the editors to say it’s for mature audiences.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: Can we get right into this?

Nehemia: Sure.

Keith: Let’s get right into it as we read it.

Nehemia: Lets read it!

Keith: As we understand it. And we’re going to read it in Hebrew of course.

Nehemia: Verses 27 and 28, “Od amar lahem: sh’matem mah shene’emar la’kadmonim, lo tin’af.” “He further said to them, you have heard what was said to the ancients: you shall not commit adultery.” “Ve’ani omer lachem sh’kol ha’roeh isha ve’yachmod otah k’var ne’ef ima be’liba.” “And I say to you that everyone who sees a woman and covets her has already adultered with her in his heart.” Or “in her heart.” Hopefully we’ll have time to get to that.

Keith: Now Nehemia, this is really a practical question. What does it mean to commit adultery? Now you’re going to say this, here’s what you’re going to say… You’re going to say, “Oh well, everyone knows. We’ve known… I want to ask this question right now.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: What does it mean technically?

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: I don’t mean graphically; technically.

Nehemia: Okay. Let’s see what the Tanakh says about that.

Keith: I love it!

Nehemia: Okay, let us open up here in the Torah, and we have… let’s see, where do we have this? Leviticus 20… Look, this is a good question. Let’s say we had no idea what the word “adultery” was.

Keith: Exactly!

Nehemia: And instead of the word “adultery” we put it in the word… I don’t know, “camel”.

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: “Thou shalt not ‘camel’.” Well, I don’t know what “camel” means.

Keith: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay.

Keith: And can I stop you?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Unchurched. First time I read this I was 14-15 years old. You’re going to laugh at this, “adult-ery” in English, so I know what the word “adult” means. “Thou shalt not commit…”

Nehemia: It depends on what adults do!

Keith: What adults do! Okay, go ahead.

Nehemia: Alright. So, Leviticus 20:10 says, “If a man commits adultery with a married woman…” so that’s important.

Keith: That’s key.

Nehemia: So, adultery involves a married woman, “…committing adultery with another man’s wife,” so it’s something you’re doing with another man’s wife that you shouldn’t be doing. “The adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” That’s Leviticus 20 verse 10. And just from that we understand that adultery is having sexual relations with another man’s wife. And that’s important because people might say, “You’re two 17-year-olds, or 18-year-olds, and you had relations outside of marriage.” That’s not adultery. That’s a whole separate thing.

Keith: It’s a whole separate thing.

Nehemia: Adultery is, the woman is married to somebody else, and a man had relations with her. That is adultery.

Keith: In technical terms… in other words…

Nehemia: That’s the definition of adultery.

Keith: Okay, okay.

Nehemia: Now, if you want to see some interesting, related scenarios, we can go and look at Deuteronomy, it has a very important passage here. And in Deuteronomy 22, it has a series of scenarios of something that isn’t adultery, but it’s also forbidden. You could maybe even say it’s a form of adultery, although that word… I don’t believe that word is used there.

So, it starts in 22 in the Hebrew, verse… Let’s see, where is this? No, that’s not it. Here we go. No, that’s not it. Okay, 22:22. “If a man is found lying with another man’s wife, both…” and does lying mean? They’re having sex. Lying, that is shochev, is “to lie down.” That’s a euphemism.

Keith: Okay.

Nehemia: What do I mean by euphemism? Euphemism is what we call in Hebrew, lashon nekiah, a clean way of saying something that is graphic. And in this case, it means they’re having sex. So, “If a man is found having sex with a woman who is” “be’ulat ba’al,” she’s “a wife of a husband,” “u’metu gam sh’neihem”, “both of them shall die.” “Ha’ish ha’shochev im ha’isha ve’ha’isha.” “The man who lies, who has sex with the woman, and the woman, and you will remove evil from Israel.” So here it leaves nothing to the imagination, it’s very clear. Now we have these scenarios… that’s adultery.

Now we have some scenarios that are a type of adultery. Let’s see. “In the case of a virgin who is engaged to a man, if a man comes upon her in town and lies with her, you shall take the two of them out to the gate of that town and stone them to death.” So, here it’s a woman who’s not married, but she is betrothed, and in the Tanakh, engagement is a form of marriage. They haven’t consummated the marriage yet, but for all other intents and purposes, she’s designated to that man.

“The girl, because she did not cry for help in the town, and the man because he violated another man’s wife.” Okay, well it’s pretty clear here, it’s adultery. “Thus you will sweep away evil from your midst. But if the man comes upon the engaged girl in the open country and the man lies with her by force, only the man who lay with her shall die.” What it is saying here, is it says, “But you should do nothing to the girl.” it says, “The girl did not incur the death penalty, for this case is like that of a man attacking another and murdering him.”

So, what we have here is a case, the first scenario is the woman consented to have the sex, the engaged woman, and so both of them are executed. In the second scenario, even if she consented, we give her the benefit of the doubt. It really has to do here with the burden of proof. They lived in a world that a woman could easily cry out and someone could come and save her; in the countryside, it doesn’t matter if she cries out, there’s nobody around to save her.

So it comes down to… it’s interesting, because we have this idea in America where we’ve been told, “Always believe the woman.” And here, in a sense, the principle is, “Never believe the woman. Of course she’s going to lie. She’s going to be executed, why wouldn’t she lie?” So, in this case, you give her the benefit of the doubt because there’s nothing she could have done even if she did cry out. Obviously, she may have cried out.

And in the city… Now, we live in a city where you can cry out and it doesn’t help. So, the modern application would be that everybody lives in the countryside, from the Torah perspective; you could be in a crowd of people in a crowded place and get raped. So, the first scenario is consensual adultery, and the second scenario is rape. And we learn something profound here unrelated to adultery, which is that rape is tantamount to murder; that’s what it says. There’s actually a statement in the Talmud, there’s an analogy here, and the analogy came to teach us something, but we actually learned about the thing it was being compared to. The phrase is, “ba le’lamed ve’nimtza lamed.” “It came to teach, and we ended up learning from it.”

The verse says… where was it? Let’s see, hold on a second… I just read it, hold on a second. “The girl did not incur…” this is verse 26, “The girl did not incur the death penalty, for this case is like that of a man attacking another and murdering him.” You don’t blame a murder victim, so you don’t blame a rape victim. So it came to teach us that she’s the victim and you don’t blame the victim, but we also learn from this that rape is analogous to murder; it’s comparable to murder, and the victim of rape is like the victim of murder. So, it’s a very powerful image there.

It’s incredible, because people take this passage, Deuteronomy 22, and they completely twist it, and they take it to mean that a woman is required to marry her rapist, which is not what it says at all. Consent is clearly the guiding principle here, and it goes over to the next passage, which we won’t get to at the moment.

So, that’s what adultery is – it’s having sex consensually… a woman having sex consensually with a man who’s not her husband.

Keith: Now I’m going to ask you a question, and I asked Dr. Moster this, “When you hear this…” and he said an interesting thing, “When you hear this what do you think of?” He immediately says, “Of course I think of the Ten Commandments. He’s teaching the Ten Commandments.” Is there anything in this first verse, “Again, he said to them you’ve heard what was said to the ancient ones…” or “to the eastern ones…”, or whoever we say.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: “…you shall not commit adultery.” Is there anything in the phrase? Is the phrase exact? Now, would you do us one favor Nehemia?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: Would you take the words Yeshua spoke and ask, even grammatically, maybe he’s talking about something else. Does it match Deuteronomy? Does it match Exodus?

Nehemia: Alright. In Exodus chapter 20 verse 14 and Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 18 we have the same exact words verbatim, “lo tin’af”, “you shall not commit adultery”. And these are the exact words, correct me if I’m wrong here, let’s see… these are the exact words we find… let me look. I have here a comparison of all the manuscripts. Let me make sure that this is the same here. So now we’re looking in the manuscripts… and in the manuscripts does it have, “lo tin’af” in all of them? It has “lo tin’af” in Manuscript Z, Manuscript C, Manuscript N… in Manuscript T, the Nun of “tin’af” was eaten by worms.

Keith: Okay!

Nehemia: But “lo tin’af”.

Keith: Okay.

Nehemia: Manuscript V, E, F, D, G, K, Q, W, A, all of them have the exact words in Ten Commandments. Manuscript J, X, Y, Gamma, B, L… M doesn’t have this passage at all, meaning it’s an abbreviated text – R and H, all those have “lo tin’af” unanimously, “thou shalt not murder”, all the manuscripts that have this verse.

Keith: Okay. So that’s what I wanted to establish. There’s no smoking gun about these two words, just the two words.

Nehemia: It’s a direct quotation from the Ten Commandments, letter by letter.

Keith: Okay, awesome.

Nehemia: It’s not a paraphrase, it’s a direct quotation.

Keith: Okay.

Nehemia: “Lo tin’af”, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.

Keith: So, if you don’t learn anything else, and you say, “I don’t want any more.”

Nehemia: Yeah.

Keith: We do know technically what it means about this particular verse.

Nehemia: And we have a very graphic description of it in Deuteronomy.

Keith: Okay.

Nehemia: And maybe a little bit less so in Leviticus. We’re going to go to the Plus section now.

Keith: Oh, my goodness.

Nehemia: Before we get to the Plus section, can I tell people about… there’s something from history, and we’ll throw it up here on the screen. What we have here is called the… I forget what it’s called, it’s called something like the Iniquitous Bible. Oh! It’s called the Wicked Bible, because there was a printer’s error. Instead of “lo tin’af”, in English, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, the word “not” was left out and it says, “thou shalt commit adultery”. Talk about errors of transcription!

Keith: Errors of transcription. When was that Nehemia? Some years ago?

Nehemia: Yeah, in the early days of printing.

Keith: In the early days of printing.

Nehemia: Or the early days of the English translation, really.

Keith: Now we’re going to get down into the nitty gritty, because Yeshua does something I think is pretty controversial, in the next part. I think most people would even say this. “Maybe he didn’t know what he’s talking about,” they’d say, “He didn’t know what he’s talking about; it’s just not human nature.” But when we get into the detail of what he says, language, history, and context, it jumps off the page. So, are you ready to jump into that?

Nehemia: I’m ready, and what I’m excited about here is I think a lot of Christians take this passage as a series of statements where we have these contrasts, “You have heard it said, but I say. You have heard it said, but I say. You have heard it said, but I say. You have heard it said, but I say.” And they say, “Well, now, Jesus came to bring a new Torah, a new law.”

Keith: That’s right. That’s right.

Nehemia: “There’s the Law of Moses and there’s the Law of Christ, and the law of Christ is more spiritual, it’s more emotional, it’s more in your heart, less to do with your actions.” We’re going to see if that’s the case, and one of the things we’re going to look at that’s related to that whole discussion is the Catalan Scriptures, the Catalan Hebrew Gospels, which are found in the Vatican. Dr. Miles Jones has talked about them. We’re going to look at this specific passage.

Keith: Wow.

Nehemia: And we’re going to see something that is just mind blowing, I think, that really brings a contrast when you compare it to Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, to say, “Okay, what is Yeshua saying here?” I’m excited about that.

Keith: Well, we’re going to move to that; I want to make a challenge to every single one of you, I’m challenging every single one of you to take advantage of becoming a Study Partner. Here’s the great news; on our site, BFA International, I did a really radical thing and made it so that you can try it for seven days for free. If you don’t like it, move on. Nobody has an excuse. We are about to study with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, PhD from Bar llan University. If there’s no other verse that we get to the detail on, Nehemia, if this is the only verse, I’m telling you right now, this changed my life.

And I want to tell you, it was because years ago we were looking at this, and I didn’t know if Yeshua knew what he was talking about there, but I think he did. And I think you should get a chance to hear – language, history, and context. So, can we move to Plus? BFA International, you become a Premium Member and you have access to everything. Say “everything”.

Nehemia: Everything.

Keith: Especially the Plus. Can we pray?

Nehemia: Yeah. Yehovah, thank you so much for giving us Your beautiful Torah, for letting us have an instruction book, “Torah” meaning instruction, of how to live our lives and walk with You. To walk out our lives with You, to walk out about with You, the way Enoch walked with You, the way that You walked through the garden with Adam and Eve, we want to walk with You in our lives. Thank you for this Torah that lets us walk with You. Amen.

Keith: Amen. And Father, thank you for those words that were spoken, as we’ve heard, to the ancient ones, to the ones so long ago that still stand today. However, we need to understand these words, language, history, and context. Thank you for the tools, thank you for the gifts, thank you for the opportunity, and thank you that we get to continue in this process of understanding Your word. And we just give You all the praise, the glory, and the honor in Your name. Amen.

Nehemia: Amen.

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