Hebrew Gospel Pearls Episode #15 Matthew 5:4

Have you ever wondered what the Gospel of Matthew was like before translators and theologians got hold of it? We now have documents that answer this question! And by the way, they are written in Hebrew—the language in which Matthew wrote his gospel!

For hundreds of years, 28 ancient Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew have been locked away in libraries around the world. Now, like prying open oysters and harvesting their treasures, our groundbreaking Hebrew Gospel Pearls studies are opening these manuscripts and bringing the pearls to the surface for all to see their value!

Studying these documents raises questions we didn’t even know we needed to ask and provides answers that have eluded readers for centuries. At last, we can set aside what translators and theologians want us to think and focus on what Matthew intended us to understand.

No one else is doing anything like this! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to encounter the Gospel of Matthew “B.T.T.” (before translators and theologians). We believe these ancient manuscripts have a message for us today!

Transcript

Keith (00:00):

Oh, well, but this...

Nehemia (00:05):

And the scribe erased Yehovah. This is a momentous.

Keith (00:07):

This is momentous.

Nehemia (00:07):

This is a very big deal.

Narrator (00:10):

You are listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson, exploring Hebrew New Testament manuscripts for yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Keith (00:24):

Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls. We are in what we're calling the biblical beatitude series. We're actually in episode 15. We have decided we're going to take our time and go through each of the, what's called traditional, beatitudes one at a time. And I'm convinced if you hang in here with us, you are going to truly be blessed slash happy. We are at, Nehemia, Matthew chapter five, verse four. And before you get started, I want to say something. You know, I read the English and it seems so simple. You just read the English. It's simple. You can have your own translation. You can come up with your own understanding. And then if I happen to open up Howard's Hebrew, I see something different. So I'd like to read the English to start. Then I want you to do what you've been doing, which is, let me just stop and say this folks. Now Nehemia gave us a great gift in 13. He actually did a Hebrew translation where he read in Hebrew from the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, and then did an English translation. We make that available to you in the 13th episode. But in each episode, we're going to go to each of these the attitudes again, and you're going to give us the translation. But first I want to read the English if it's okay.

Nehemia (01:32):

Sure.

Keith (01:32):

Matthew chapter five, verse four in NASB. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. What else do I need to understand? I know what mourning is, I know what comfort is. Let's move on, right, Nehemia? It's over, that's it.

Nehemia (01:47):

I don't know. What are they mourning about?

Keith (01:49):

Exactly.

Nehemia (01:50):

So, I mean, it really begs the question. And then look, there's a parallel here, Luke 6:21, which is the so-called servant on the plain. And there he says, blessed are you that weep now for you shall laugh. And this is considered the parallel. Now, which one of these did he say? And maybe he said both, right?

Keith (02:11):

Yes.

Nehemia (02:11):

In other words, maybe on one occasion on a hill he said, blessed are those who mourn, and on a plain he said, blessed are those who weep now for you shall laugh. And they're both true, it's possible, right? Or maybe he said something in between, and it was just recorded differently by two different people. Right? I mean, there's different ways of looking at it. So when we come to the Hebrew, it's a little bit more complicated.

Keith (02:35):

Yes.

Nehemia (02:35):

So Hebrew Matthew survives on this verse in 20 different manuscripts. Let me see if that's correct. You know what, it survives in this section on 20 different manuscripts, but this specific verse is actually, am I right? Only in 19, right? Cause manuscript G doesn't have this verse at all. Um, manuscript G, which I call part of group, you know, I broke them up into two groups, A and B, and really largely based on this first, then this whole passage, but really this verse. So let's just remind the audience what we talked about an episode, I think 13. That, um, group A of the Hebrew Matthew manuscripts has verse two followed by verse three, which, you know, like, of course it's followed to verse three is followed by verse two. Not of course. Which is then followed by verse five, which is then followed by verse four, which is then followed by verse eight. Now group B also has verses two and eight. Between verses two and eight it only has verse four. It doesn't have verses three and five. Among those manuscripts G is also missing verse four. So it goes from verse two to verse eight. Now why are these verses missing? And there's obviously two possibilities. One possibility is that we have a scribal error in the Hebrew, in the manuscripts where it's missing. And what do I mean by a scribal error? A scribe is copying and he's looking back and forth from, he has two texts. The source he's copying from, the first manuscript, the source manuscript. And the second manuscript he has that he's copying from. And he's constantly looking back and forth. And every time he looks back and forth, he stores in his memory two or three words. And he even may say those words out loud, right?

Nehemia (04:32):

So let's say he's copying verse one. He says, he looks from the source, but he (Hebrew), he looks to where he's copying and he writes (Hebrew). So he stores a few words in his memory. There are traditions where it talks about how the scribes would actually say these words out loud. Uh there's other traditions, for example, in the Greek world, it's, supposedly that have the description where one scribe would supposedly read it out loud and the second scribe would write. We don't really have evidence of that in the Jewish world. They would be looking back and forth and probably for most Greek manuscripts as well. So here's what happens when he looks back to the, his source. Sometimes what happens is he looks to the wrong place. How does he look to the wrong place? So let's say you have several words in a series of verses that are identical. And so he looks, and here we have a beautiful example. How many verses here do we have that begin with the word ashrey? So we have, and that's called, um, (Greek) is the Greek word for similar. (Greek) means the similar beginning.

Keith (05:51):

Yes.

Nehemia (05:51):

So he sees a series of verses with a similar beginning. One, two, and I'm talking just in the Hebrew - one, two, three, four, five, six, and then you could say maybe seven because it's a similar beginning. So seven verses.

Keith (06:07):

Yes.

Nehemia (06:09):

Um, and finally we have, oh, so verse 12 doesn't begin with ashrey. So we have, we have seven verses in the Hebrew version of group B where it begins with the same beginning, ashrey, ashrey, ashrey. And then we have in, uh, the Greek, we have nine verses that begin with the same beginning. So it's possible the scribe is looking back and forth and he comes to the end of the verse and he looks for the next verse, which begins with ashrey. And instead of copying the verse he wanted to copy, he copied the next verse. That's (Greek). Now, (Greek), the similar beginning can cause two different types of errors. And this is by the way, I'm giving you guys now a crash course in the textual criticism. It can cause the error of haplography. Haplography, think of the word half. Sounds like half lography. Haplography is where I have two elements - two verses, and they both begin ashrey. So let's say for group A I have versus two, three, five, four, and eight. Right? So now the scribe who created group B, and this is one way that it might've happened. He's copying verse two. Okay, great. He then copies, he's then looking for the verse that begins with a ashrey. And instead of going to verses three and five, he jumps to verse four. Okay. Why? Because it also, he remembered the next word was ashrey and he looks back at his source and he copies the word ashrey. Okay. So halplography is I've lost the verse. You also have dittography. Think of the word ditto. Dittography is where I copied the same thing twice. Now I want to show you something, I wasn't even planning on doing this, but since I'm giving the crash course and in a textual criticism, I'm going to show you an example of dittography in the Tanakh. And I was just looking at this yesterday.

Keith (08:06):

Oh, this is the good stuff you guys.

Nehemia (08:07):

This is really good stuff. You're not going to even believe this, Keith. Why is this such good stuff? I'm going to show you in a minute. So here we have in I Samuel, let me pull it up. In I Samuel, you have a series of verses, and I'm actually to ask you to read it in English. And then, people, just listen for the repeated words. Because the repeated words, those are the words that will cause our hemolial. Hemolial is the similar. You have the similar beginning called hemolial arctone and hemolial televtone is the similar ending. We're not dealing here with hemolial televtone. So the, so the similar beginning - guys, this is really foundational stuff. Cause there's so many things in the Tanakh and in the new Testament, that kind of don't make sense until you're aware of this type of problem. You'll see scholars say, well, some manuscripts read and you're like, well, why did they read that way? Um, I don't know. Well now, you know, now you'll know why. So let's start in I Samuel 16, verse eight.

Keith (08:45):

Okay. Verse eight. Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, neither has Yehovah chosen this one. Next Jessie made Shammah pass by. And he said, neither has Yehovah chosen this one. ThusJesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. But Samuel said to Jesse, Yehovah has not chosen these. Continue?

Nehemia (09:32):

All right, well, let's stop there for a second. So we had two verses, verses nine and 10, and they both begin with the same two words (Hebrew). And (Hebrew) or Jessie caused to pass or passover. And then the following word begins with the same letter. (Hebrew) And Jessie caused, to pass there or (Hebrew) and Jesse caused to pass seven. So we have two verses that begin with the same exact two words. And then the third word has the same letter. So this is rife for hemolial arctone, the similar beginning. Uh, if we looked in all the manuscripts of the Tanakh, I will be shocked if we didn't find a manuscript somewhere where this mistake occurred. And lo and behold..

Keith (10:24):

You found one?

Nehemia (10:28):

A year and a half ago, I was in Geneva, Switzerland, where I had the very blessed opportunity to examine one of the six major manuscripts of the Tanakh. And the manuscript is called Sassoon 1053. And I was examining Sassoon 1053 for this exact verse. And what do I find? I find hemolial arctone, not of heplography where there's two versus but one was lost, but dittography where there's two verses and one was copied a second time. So let me show this to you. Okay.

Keith (11:06):

Excellent. Are you going to show our folks? Are you going to show it?

Nehemia (11:09):

I'm going to do it. I want to share the screen here.

Keith (11:11):

While he's looking, stop just for a second. Now, listen, guys, listen, listen to this. Now I don't know where you folks are at in terms of the significance of studying scripture, but we're studying with the guy who doesn't even have this planned in his head when we start this thing and it just comes to him. He says, you know, not only does he take us to the verse, he says, I've seen the manuscript.

Nehemia (11:32):

I held it in my hands, Keith. I actually did images of it with a microscope. I'll show you one day. It's pretty cool stuff. Okay, this is page 259 of Sassoon 1053. And here you can see something happens. What happened? So somebody erased the corrector and it seems it's the original scribe. Why do I say it's the original scribe? Because what the scribe would do is he would write the consonants and he would come then either here, or a second scribe would come in and write the vowels and accents. You can see whoever erased this, never wrote the vowels and accents. The vowels and accents were never added. I can see that particularly, for example, in this word... And what did he do? He didn't erase the whole word. He erased the bottom half of the word. Why do you do that? Because space is in the Hebrew manuscripts have significance. If there's a space of an entire line or a half a line or part of a line, a significant size space. That means this is the end of a thought. Now here's a new thought. So what they would often do is that if they needed to erase something, is they would only erase the bottom half of the letters to say, Hey, this is erased. They would also not put in accents and vowels.

Nehemia (12:46):

But another way they would do it is they would raise the bottom half and erasing the bottom half told you, okay, don't read these words. Well, you can't even read them. They're hard to read. These words are erased, but this is not a space that was intended. This is a space caused by erasure. So how do I know this is erased? So I held it in my hands and I could see he scratched off parts of the parchment here on these bottom three lines. And what exactly happened? So we had the case of hormonial arctone, which was the similar beginning. Remember just like in Matthew five, we have a series of verses that all begin ashrey, ashrey, ashrey. In the Greek it's the parallel word. Um, and here he has, (Hebrew) caused the pass. And here I could see the remnants, the top half of the words (Hebrew). So he copied the verse. And then when he got to the end of the verse, which was here, he copied the verse the second time. And he actually ended up erasing the first two words of the second instance and then filled them in. You know, he went back because he realized, oh, oh, I shouldn't have erased the bottom half of these two words. These two words we need. So he had to rewrite the bottom half of the words (Hebrew). And then here in the next column, you could see at the top of the column is the full verse (Hebrew). Now here's the really cool thing, Keith. One of the last three words of the verse low, not, he chose Yehovah - meaning Yehovah did not choose. Okay. So, and look, the next verse begins (Hebrew), which is what (Hebrew). Instead of jumping to the second verse, he copied the first verse twice. Okay. That's dittography from the word ditto, as opposed to halpography, which is one word half, where were you lose half of it or connect it with the word half that reminds me of, okay. So here's the beautiful thing. What were the last three words of the verse he copied twice? (Hebrew). Actually have a second thing going on here, which is called hormonial televtone, the similar ending. Okay? Because (Hebrew) and the following verse also (Hebrew). So this was ripe for error, right? He's looking back and forth and he sees, oh, I just copied (Hebrew). He says let me jump to the, let me now look back and find those words and copy whatever comes after it.

Nehemia (15:26):

And that's what he did, but here's the really, really beautiful thing. So this verse is erased. And I can tell you what it says. I know exactly what it says, because he copied the same verse twice (Hebrew). And this is the top of (Hebrew). And he said, (Hebrew) also in this lo (Hebrew) Yehovah.

Keith (15:53):

Oh, but this is the end.

Nehemia (15:55):

The scribe erased Yehovah! This is a momentous. This is a very big deal. Why is this a very big deal? I researched for years a question. Let's back up. I started out, Keith, with the hypothesis. First, I started out with the observation that in the Aleppo Codex, the most important manuscript of the tanakh, the name is usually written without the full vowels. Just like it's written here without the full vowels, by the way. And every once in a while, the scribe put in the full vowels, the full (Hebrew) and people said to me, no, Nehemia, it's not possible. If there was, you're telling us, telling us the scribe made a mistake. And I said, yes, he made a mistake. That was right. I called and I did the study, Keith, of course the mistake that got it. Right. Got it. Right. It's it's, it's epic. It is epic. So the mistake that got it. Right. And in that study, I said something to the effect of that I was told, say, told, told, I was told that when they, when the scribes made a mistake with the name in the Aleppo codex, they never erased a vowel or an accent. And I remember, I don't know if I said it, this study or different study. I said that this was based on a database that was compiled over years in the 1970s and eighties by scholars who examined the Aleppo codex directly. And I said something to the effect of, I wish I could see it for myself, that database. Not only have I seen the database for myself, but I actually got to see the Aleppo Codex for myself. And not for five minutes, like when I was there with Reggie White, but for nine hours I got to sit with it and examine it. And what I found within the first, probably 15 minutes of studying the database, is that what I was told, say told..

Keith (17:42):

Told.

Nehemia (17:43):

was wrong. Not only did they erase the accents and vowels in the Aleppo Codex, but I found five places where they erased the letters, the actual letters. Now, why is that such a big deal? It's such a big deal because there's a rabbinical law based on Deuteronomy 12:3-4. Can you read those verses Keith?

Keith (18:03):

Oh man. I'm a little overwhelmed right now. I can't. I mean, did you plan on doing this?

Nehemia (18:11):

No I didn't. Let's go back. Let's read Deuteronomy 12:3-4.

Keith (18:15):

Okay, hold on here.

Nehemia (18:16):

Oh, this is completely unplanned.

Keith (18:19):

But this is beautiful.

Nehemia (18:20):

This is important and it'll help us with Hebrew Matthew.

Keith (18:23):

Absolutely.

Nehemia (18:23):

It will help us immensely. Look, let me tell you why. Well, read those verses and then remind me to tell you why this is such an important manuscript.

Keith (18:31):

Okay, Deuteronomy 12:3 & 4, reading from the NASB.

Nehemia (18:37):

It is talking about destroying the high places of the pagans, the nations, where you are coming to inherit their land in verse two, verse three.

Keith (18:45):

Okay. And you shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim and with fire and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods and you show obliterate their name from that place. You shall not act like this toward Yehovah your God.

Nehemia (19:00):

And it literally says you shall not do so to Yehovah your God. Yes. Now what does it mean in the context? In the context that means destroy the sacred places of the pagans and in the context it means don't worship God the way they worship their gods. They worship gods with sacred pillars. They worship gods with high places. They worship gods with altars to Baal. Don't worship Yehovah the way they worship their gods. Leviticus 17 says, if you bring a sacrifice and it's not to the entrance of the tent of meeting, it's considered like murder. It says blood shall be reckoned to that person. So you shall not do so to the Lord, your God, or to Yehovah your God literally. Means don't worship your God the way that they worship their gods.

Nehemia (19:45):

That's what it means in the context. Okay? The rabbis come along and they do something they often do. They take it out of context and they say, what are we commanded to do to erase the name of the pagan gods? And therefore it's forbidden to erase the name Yehovah. If you accidentally wrote your Yehovah somewhere, it's forbidden to erase it. Now I'm going to show you what they did in Torah scrolls. This is really cool. This is totally off the grid. I wasn't planning on bringing this, but I'll bring it cause it's kind of cool. So they did different things in Torah scrolls. What they would often do if they made a mistake in a Torah scroll is they would...this is by the way, another example of homolial arctone, interestingly enough. It's a beautiful example because it's not homoarctone. Homo means the same. It's homolial, the similar beginning. So this is a Torah scroll from the 13th century. And you can see here, the scribe copied on the first line. He got to the end of the line in Deuteronomy and he copied the words (Hebrew) and then he got to the next line. And instead of copying the word (Hebrew), which was the next word, he copied you Yehovah. Now, right now we don't have Yehovah there. We have this blank space and the blank space has an ink rectangle around it.

Keith (21:11):

Yes.

Nehemia (21:12):

So his eye jumped. This is called parablaspis. Parablaspis is when the scribes eye jumped. It jumped from line two to line three. And he copied the word Yehovah here. And immediately he realized it was a mistake and he put a rectangle around it. And then... And this is what it looks like zoomed in. You can see the traces of the ink rectangle. Then he came with a razor and he actually cut it out. So they did that in Torah scrolls. They couldn't do that in codexes. You tell me why couldn't they do it in codexes?

Keith (21:43):

Two sides of the paper.

Nehemia (21:48):

That's right. If you cut out the word, you've now cut out a word from the second side, but you didn't mean to cut out. So in codexes what they did is they would often put the ink rectangle around it. But in both the Aleppo Codex and in Sassoon 10 53, they erase the name itself. Now, when it comes to..

Keith (22:12):

Excuse me, sorry.

Nehemia (22:14):

Contrary to rabbinical law. According to the rabbis, it's a sin against the Torah to erase even a single letter of God's name. But the scribe in the Aleppo Codex did it.

Keith (22:23):

Permission to just, Nehemia you really caught me off guard. Folks, I apologize in advance for this. I know we're supposed to be getting the Hebrew Matthew, but this is, this is important. This is really extremely important. Um, you're telling me, now we got beat up on some of this regarding what happens to the name. You're telling me, Nehemia - you never told me this, by the way - in the Aleppo Codex you found five?

Nehemia (22:47):

Five instances. So here's what we were told. Okay. Or here's what I would argue. That the scribe accidentally put it in the vowel. And then I was told he couldn't erase the vowel because he wasn't allowed to. And I said I wish I could verify that. I verified it - it's not true. If he wanted to erase the accents of the vowels, he could. And I found places where in the Aleppo Codex, it originally had Yehovah with the full vowels and the scriber erased the holem. I found a case like that. Right? So I have six places or eight places, it depends how you count them, where it has the full vowels. But there's one place where, um, where it had the full vowels and he erased the holem. But it's even bigger than that. Not only did he erase the vowels, he actually erased the consonants in five places. But I only have circumstantial evidence in the Aleppo Codex. I very powerful circumstantial evidence, especially one of the cases where you can kind of see the outline of the first heh and the second heh. When it comes to Sassoon 10 53, it's not circumstantial evidence. I'm going to share it one more time and I'm going to tell you why it's so important.

Keith (23:51):

Please.

Nehemia (23:52):

So here it is on the screen, the bottom of yod heh vav heh was erased, contrary to rabbinical law. So we know 100% this scribe was not a rabbinical Jew. And the same thing of the scribe who wrote at least the consonants of the Aleppo Codex. And you could argue the accents as well. But certainly the consonants. He wrote, yod heh vav heh, and he erased the bottom of it. Why is this so important? So this is a codex, a Bible that was written shortly after the Aleppo Codex was written. And it's mentioned in a book list that was found in the Cairo Geniza. The Cairo Geniza was this archive of manuscripts from Cairo. And in this archive, it mentions all the books they had in their library. And this is the book of the Jews of ?, which is the Jews of the ? meaning Israel. So the Jews of Israel, the Jerusalemite Jews in Cairo, had this book list of their library. And one of them was called the brother of the crown. And the brother of the crown it's been argued is Sassoon 10 53.

Keith (25:12):

Oh my goodness.

Nehemia (25:13):

And so Sassoon 1053 actually mentions that, it's the earliest reference we have that Benesher a scribe who wrote the Aleppo Codex in Sassoon 1053 itself. And that the scribe wrote the consonants, erased the bottom half of yod heh vav heh.

Keith (25:28):

There it is guys. I just want everyone to realize, I mean, I'm sitting here in real time in utter - I'm trying to hold myself together. Folks, after I get off this call with Nehemia, I'll yell and I'll shout and I'll dance, uh, because, uh, what you have uncovered is the approach that you take, Nehemia, which is this. You say that you were born in Illinois, but you're really from Missouri. In his heart he is a show me person. And I'm not going to go much further other than to say this. What you just showed us that you saw, changes the game of the argument that has been cast upon you and upon...

Nehemia (26:11):

The big arguments is they never made mistakes with the name it's not possible. Oh my goodness. I found mistakes. Folks. This is mistakes that they corrected. I found mistakes they didn't correct, Keith.

Keith (26:23):

Can I say this? Now this is what I want to say because I know what you're going to end up doing. I know what you're going to end up doing. We've gone too far. But I want to say why this is significant with Hebrew Matthew. Because with Hebrew Matthew, as you were an investigator in Torah scrolls and the big six and dealing with these codexes, these powerful, powerful things. You've taken the same approach with the Hebrew gospel of Matthew. You have taken the same approach to actually investigate what is the scribe doing? And in Hebrew Matthew chapter five, verse four, we see it in a powerful way.

Nehemia (26:55):

Now before we get the five, four, we'll get to that in the plus. I don't think we're gonna get to it. Now, I got to explain these two groups. We have group A and we have group B and remember, group B, doesn't have verses three and five. Right? And so all of this was to explain why it is they don't have verse three and five. And there's two explanations. I didn't even get to the second explanation. The first explanation is that maybe there's an error that the scribe was copying and it says ashray seven times. Seven verses in a row began ashray, ashray, ashray, ashray, ashray, ashray, ashray. And in the Greek, it's two more. Maybe the original Hebrew had all nine verses and verses six and seven that we'll get to in a future episode, maybe they were lost by homolial arctone, similar beginning with hypography. That is, it was lost. Okay, so that's possibility number one. The verses were lost that when he saw the word ashray his eyes skipped and instead of copying verse three, he skipped to what he thought was the next word to copy what it was, verse four. And then he did it again and copied verse eight, instead of verse five, or actually it's backwards. Meaning we have verse three followed by verse five followed by verse four in the group B manuscripts. So that's possibility number one, that the original Hebrew had all, nine or possibly seven of these ashray verses of the blessed be verses, ? verses, and that two or four of them were lost.

Nehemia (28:25):

That's possibility number one. What's possibility number two? Number two is kind of obvious, is that the group B manuscripts have the original Hebrew Matthew and that Hebrew Matthew originally just didn't have a four of the verses that the Greek Matthew has and that somebody came along and said, wait a minute, there's missing verses here. We've got to add them. We've got to add them in from the Greek or from the Latin or whatever they were using. Right? And then they translated them from the Latin and the Greek into Hebrew. That's possibility number two. And what suggests that as a strong possibility? I lean towards that possibility, but I don't know. Right? How can I know? I lean towards that possibility because in group B manuscripts, where they do have verses three and five, verse five comes before verse four, and we have this idea in textual criticism. It's a very common thing in the study of manuscripts that originally something is written in the margin and later another scribe comes along and writes it in the body of the text. And he doesn't exactly know where to put it. So he puts it in the wrong place. In other words, let's imagine this scenario. Originally Hebrew Matthew has verse two verse four, followed by verse eight. Between verses, um, two and eight, there was one verse. So verse three isn't there, verse five isn't there, verse six isn't there, and verse seven isn't there. Maybe that's what the original Hebrew Matthew had. I'm not saying that's what Yeshua said in the sermon on the Mount. We have the Greek testimony of Matthew and we have the Greek testimony of Luke chapter six, right? We have two other testimonies. But maybe the original Hebrew Matthew had jumped from verse two to verse four, to verse eight.

Nehemia (30:10):

And maybe that's how it originally was written. And then a scribe comes along and says, wait a minute. I know there's more of the sermon on the Mount. I don't remember everything. And he goes, and he looks in Greek or in whatever he had. And he writes verses three and five in the margin. And then in another phase, now phase three, verse three is put where it belongs the next time the manuscript is copied, but it doesn't exactly know where to put verse five. So he puts it after four. Okay. That's scenario number two. And I really have no way of knowing which of these took place. What's really amazing is what we find in verse four. Because all the manuscripts, except for manuscript G, have verse four, but both group A and group B have verse four and verse four has something that just blew my mind. I'm going to save it for the plus section.

Keith (31:01):

And the reason we have to save it, you guys. Please, we're not playing around here. We have to give it it's time. We have to give it its effort. We have to be able to take that approach. I want to tell folks something also Nehemia, I did something in preparation for going to the plus section. I called a famous Orthodox rabbi in Israel. And I asked him about the two Hebrew words in five verse four, without giving him context. Like I just said, what do these two words mean? And I just say something, he blessed me. So we're going to go to the plus section. Episode 14 is where we got into five three. And that is at nehemiaswall. It is for the folks that are supporters of nehemiaswall. Now we're at five four. What we're going to do now is we're going to end the public presentation. If you're not blessed by this, listen, I'm telling you folks right now, you could stop right now and be blessed. But I'm telling you there's so much more that we're about to go to in five four. If it blows Nehemia away, it's going to blow everybody away. So what you get into right now is you go to Biblical Foundations, BFAinternational.com and become a premium member. You want you to become a premium member. You have access to five four. The front page of BFAinternational.com. You just click the Hebrew Gospel Pearls, and you'll have access to all of that. Nehemia, is that enough? Have we given enough before we...

Nehemia (32:21):

I just want to say one last thing? What I love so much about sassoon 10 53 example I shared, is that in textual criticism they tell you all these theories about how errors take place, but they're just theories. Here we can see what the scribe did. Brown and another shade of brown and black and white, right? In other, we see what actually happens as clear as day. And did that happen in Hebrew Matthew? Or did this other thing happen? I mean, we don't know for sure. Right? It's one of those two possibilities. But it's such a, such a beautiful example that can shed light on so many other things. It really blessed me to be able to see that in Hebrew Matthew, and tie that in with what happened in the Tanakh. It's just beautiful things. And I can't wait to share even more powerful example in my view, in five four in the plus section.

Keith (33:08):

I mean, I'm just like, I'm a little overwhelmed and excited. So I want to go on. Can you pray for us? And then I'll close.

Nehemia (33:15):

Yehovah Avinu shebashamayim. Yehovah our father in heaven. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to find that I was wrong about the Aleppo codex. That indeed when it came to your name and a mistake was made, if they knew about that mistake, the scribes corrected it. And when they didn't correct it, that means they either didn't know about it or they thought it was right. It was not how they intended it originally, but in a different way, Yehovah. I am so blessed to have found out and discovered these things. I realized this is no small thing that few people have had this opportunity. And to give me the opportunity to share that with the world, Yehovah, is such a great honor, such a great blessing. I ask Yehovah for all those who seek your name, who want to understand your word, to understand the words spoken 2000 years ago in Matthew and whatever words they come to understand you, Yehovah, you give them the heart to understand those things and the guidance to walk in your way in your path. Amen.

Keith (34:15):

Yes. And father, thank you so much for what you have taught me regarding vision, that when you give vision you also give provision. I want to thank you for the people that have provided for this process to go forward. I want to thank you for every person who's put their hand to the plow that has helped us. We ask them blessing upon them. Now, father, as we go forward and we slowed down in this section, these biblical beatitudes, so much we can learn so much. So much we can apply, so much that we can share. We just ask that you would give us grace to continue in excellence. We thank you for all the things that you have done are doing and will do. We lift all up to you in your name. Amen.

Narrator (34:55):

You have been listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. For a more in-depth study, check out Hebrew Gospel Pearls plus at nehemiaswall.com and BFAinternational.com. Thank you for your support.