Hebrew Gospel Pearls #17 Matthew 5:6-7

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

Nehemia (00:00):

And in both cases, both Rabbi Akiva and Jesus (Yeshua) were repeating something from Leviticus 19. [Hebrew] love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Narrator (00:11):

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

Keith (00:25):

Welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, episode 17, the biblical beatitude series. I'd add a third B, it's a buffet. We are in a new studio doing new things. We've raised the bar and I have to say again, Nehemia, I am just so excited that we're going to be sharing the information with folks, but we've got a controversy right off the bat. I'm calling this episode, if it's okay Nehemia, the missing verses episode. Because when we go to the Hebrew gospel of Matthew, according to George Howard, if I can, I've been continually going back there in Hebrew gospel pearls. George Howard doesn't have these two verses. They don't exist. But I thought to myself, oh, this is simple. We'll just call Nehemia Gordon from the Hebrew University. He'll find the verses. Certainly Nehemia will tell us where they are. So I called you up and I said, okay, Nehemia, you've got those in the manuscript. You got those two verses? What happened?

Nehemia (01:16):

So I looked through all 28 manuscripts. 20 of them are preserved in this section, meaning the beatitudes. None of them have verses six and seven, six and seven do not exist within Shem Tov's Hebrew Matthew tradition.

Keith (01:32):

And that's the end of episode 17. We will see you in episode 18. No way, it gets good folks. So what are we going to do, Nehemia? Can we do this? Can we just talk a little bit about, for those who haven't been with us, just a little bit of text criticism here. So when you, when you hear about this, when you see that those verses aren't there, what's something that you do? What's a natural thing that you would do.

Nehemia (01:55):

Well, first I ask the question, is there something in the text that would explain what happened to those verses, if they were lost, right? There's two possibilities. And we don't know, we weren't there. Either they were originally there and they were lost from the Hebrew, or they were added in the Greek. Those are the two possibilities. Do we have plausible explanations why it would have gone in either direction? Well, we have a really good explanation of why it would be lost from the Hebrew. And we talked about this, I think in episode 15, where we talked about the common scribal error called parablepsis, and this is a specific type called homoeoarcton, the similar beginning. You have a series of verses that begin ashray, ashray, ashray, ashray, and it's described as looking back and forth. And he's copying. He's about to start a new verse beginning with ashray, and he copies the wrong verse. He jumps forward. That can cause actually a verse, if he jumps backward, it causes the verse to be copied twice. We brought an example of that from the Tanakh manuscript. And then it can also cause a verse to be lost. So it's a perfectly good reason why a verse would be lost. That explains one side, right? The other, the flip side is why would a verse be added? And in this case, we have a really good reason why it would be added. It would be added because we talked in the last episode about the sermon on the Mount, which is in Matthew 5:6-7. There's also something New Testament scholars called the sermon on the plain, which is in Luke 6. And it's possible that these verses come from Luke 6. I know you have another hypothesis of where the verses came from and I'll let you run with that.

Keith (03:24):

Well, so one of the things that we've always thought about, I've always heard, is that the sermon on the Mount is a parallel of what happened at THE mountain - the 10 words, the 10 matters, the 10 commandments - and that it was important that we have 10 from the beatitudes. And so is it possible? They say, look, we're missing two. We need some help here. Who knows?

Nehemia (03:46):

Okay. Yeah. That's an interesting theory, it's an explanation of, it could explain where this came from and why they have these two more verses and they weren't reinventing the wheel. Right? Or inventing the wheel. Um, they had material from Luke where they could fill in some of the gaps.

Keith (04:02):

Exactly, exactly.

Nehemia (04:03):

Yeah. So that's a possibility, right? Or maybe Yeshua said these words and they were lost in the Hebrew. That was the first possibility. Or they were originally in the Greek and they were lost from the Hebrew, right?

Keith (04:12):

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, and there's a lot of people that are going to be listening this time, Nehemia, that have not listened to the first 15 that we did... Let me just stop for a second folks. If you don't know what's happening here. Hebrew Gospel Pearls, we started at the beginning of what's called the worldwide pandemic, where we were stuck in our homes for a period of time. And it was you, Nehemia, who said, listen, we really need to take advantage of this time. And we came into the Hebrew Gospel Pearls, and we did about 30 episodes, 15 of them public and 15 of them, what we call the plus episodes. What are the plus episodes? The plus episodes are for those who want to go a little further, I call them the hard-hat episodes. You want to go a little deeper. And also you're able to support both nehemiaswall and the work that you're doing, and BFAInternational.com.

Nehemia (04:57):

And really what inspired me was I would get emails from people that said, I can't leave my house. I'm all alone. All I have is listening to your programs. Can you put out some, you know... And we actually started with Live from Quarantine, and then that evolved/morphed into Hebrew Gospel Pearls, which we've been talking about for 20 years. And we finally did it. And those who don't know, you're going to watch us go through the process of production. And the first production was, I was embarrassed by it. I forgot to turn on the microphone.

Keith (05:23):

It was hilarious. We went on and on and on and we got better and better and better and better all the way through episode 15. Now let me stop. If you didn't watch episode 15, Nehemia changed the game for me as far as what happened in that episode, because it wasn't planned. It wasn't something that we had prepared, but you went into, Nehemia, talking about how scribes are dealing with different things. It was, it was epic, epic 15. We go now to this particular part. And what I'm saying to you is that as a part of a Hebrew Gospel Pearls, we're doing our best because what happened is Nehemia changed the game again. He raised the bar and gave the opportunity for us to be together in Charlotte, in this awesome studio, where we're going to bring you the buffet of all the information that we have. Now we could have quickly gone over six and seven and said, we're just going to do, this is what I did. We're just going to stick with Howard and with six and seven. And I thought for sure, Nehemia, you were going to pull a rabbit out of your hat and say, I found those verses. But you didn't. But we're going to do something so cool. Can I tell what we're going to do? We're actually going to give you what we think, if those verses are, whether in English or Greek, what a possibility would be for those verses in Hebrew. We have the ability to do that.

Nehemia (06:33):

And what we have is an incredible resource. This man in the 19th century named Franz Dalich, uh, was a great scholar of biblical Hebrew of Tanackh Hebrew. And he decided to translate the New Testament into a Hebrew that was the style of the Tanakh. Now he did it for his own reasons and agenda. Honestly, he was trying to convert Jews to Christianity. And he said, well, if it sounds like medieval Hebrew or modern Hebrew, or at the time it was called enlightenment Hebrew, the Jews will feel that it doesn't feel ancient and authentic. So let's present it as something that's like biblical Hebrew, like the Hebrew of the Tanakh in order to make Jews feel more comfortable. That was Dalich's approach. Uh, but we can benefit here from what he's done, because we don't have the, the Hebrew of Shem Tov, which either according to some people was a translation or it goes back to an original that Matthew wrote. Either way, we don't even have that for five, six, and seven. What we have is instead Dalich's back translation from the Greek into the Hebrew. Let me read the verses from Dalich [Hebrew], blessed are those who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. And then verse seven [Hebrew] blessed are those who are merciful, for they will be treated with mercy. Or they will receive mercy. And that's a translation from the Greek back into Hebrew. And we can deal with this without the Hebrew Shem Tov, right? In other words, based in the Greek, what can we learn about what was said there?

Keith (08:11):

So what we're going to do is though the verses are lost in Shem Tov, we're actually going to go over these verses right now in this episode, right?

Nehemia (08:18):

This is a book that was written by a distant cousin of mine back in the 19th century, around the year 1880 I believe it was. It was the first commentary by a Jew who didn't convert to Christianity, a Jew who remained Jewish, um, on the New Testament. And there are Jews who commented on certain parts of the New Testament, but it was only in the context of, well, we've got to prove us right and you Christians wrong. Here he's not trying to do that. He's saying, okay, how would this have been understood to an audience of Jewish people 2000 years ago? That's the question he asked. Now, I don't always agree with him, but he brings insights and he's a trailblazer in that he wrote the first Jewish commentary. And it's interesting. We have this other book, the Jewish, uh, what is it called? Jewish annotated New Testament. Which was made by modern Jewish, uh, mostly secular, uh, even if they're Orthodox scholars, they're coming from a secular approach, um, from an academic approach, looking at the New Testament. And that's kind of like almost like the final stage. And here's like the first stage, right? It's kind of the culmination of this hundred plus 150 years almost of, um, Jewish scholarship on the New Testament. Not the final word, but here is the earliest phase of that in around late 1800s.

Keith (09:35):

So I want to do, is I want to read this, but also want to bring you guys up to date with what we're doing. So we have Howard, this is Howard's translation. Nehemia, I hate to treat you like an encyclopedia, but you do so great as far as explaining. So we've got Howard's translation of Shem Tov. I've got my English Bible. We've got Dalich, which took the Greek and translated it back into Hebrew. And I also got another little treat over there that I'll probably talk about at the end. But then I want to read from your cousin's book because here's what he says; ohh the gladness (and I want to know Nehemia, how much you would agree or disagree with what he is saying here)? Okay. Oh the gladness of those who hunger and thirst for... And then he says, it doesn't put it in English. He changes it and he italicizec it or someone italicize it, I should say. And it says (Hebrew), they will be satisfied. Why did they do that? What do you think? Why do you think he decided to kind of highlight that word in this verse.

Nehemia (10:26):

So in his commentary, he's going to talk about the words (Hebrew), which so we have these words in every language. Let me back up. So there's this common thought that if you speak, I don't know, English, and then you speak Spanish, that every word in English will have a direct translation in Spanish. And every word in German will have a direct translation in Serbian. And if you speak Russian, there'll be a direct translation one-to-one for every word in Chinese. And that's not how it works. There's a famous example of this, which is a tragic example. The US sent an ultimatum to Japan in 1945. And they said, something to the fact of, if you do not respond positively to this warning, we will destroy your country. And the Japanese foreign minister was asked about this and he responded with a word that translated, uh, what was intended to translate as something like no comment. Instead the translators translated it in such a way that it meant something, I forget exactly, but something to the effect of this isn't worth commenting on. And the US said, okay, we're gonna drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, right? Instead of maybe a day later, they were going to say, okay, now we're now we've discussed it in the government of, of the Japanese empire, we're going to surrender. Maybe they would have said that. We don't know, we don't have a crystal ball, but it's accepted by many historians that this mistranslation - and it wasn't exactly a mistranslation. The Japanese word could have been translated in multiple ways. And the translators chose a way of translating it that meant to the Americans, okay, you're not taking this seriously. We're going to make you take us seriously. Instead of what the intention probably was which is "I haven't even seen that, I don't know what you're talking about. Let me go, let me go check." Right? I'm just a foreign minister or whoever it was. Um, let me go ask the prime minister and the emperor. I can't speak on their behalf, right? And now would, they have said something different? I don't know. But a mistranslation there led to something tragic. And, uh, this is especially true when you have these words in biblical Hebrew. But in this case, Hebrew is not unique, right? We have words in one language that are loaded with all these meanings and connotations and the other language doesn't have that meaning for that word.

Nehemia (12:44):

There's another famous example by this Hebrew linguist, he takes the Hebrew word kadur which means a ball. It also means a pill. It also means a bullet. And the story he tells is the Israeli soldiers at the bus station, he sees this tourist and she's holding her head and she clearly has a migraine or something. He says, what you need is a bullet for your head. But what he meant is what you need a pill, right? You need an aspirin. And, and he's carrying, you know, a glelone, which is like a short AK 47. And, and he says, you need a bullet for your head. Right? And she's horrified, right? So my head's fine now. Right? So there, you have this problem where there are words in one language that may have three or four meaniings and in the other language, they might have three or four meanings, but they don't always overlap. What we want to do is try to find out is what is the word in this case in Hebrew, and what does it mean in English? And in this case, the word tzedakah is a very hard word to translate. It's hard to translate into English because it means many different things. Tzedakah could be righteousness, meaning I follow the Torah. Tzedakah could be charity. I give to poor people, that's called tzedakah, right? It has a bunch of different meanings. It could be true judgment in a court case. Right? Well, which one is it here if we're dealing with the Hebrew word. Now, to be honest, what we need to do is we need to look at the Greek. Translate it back into Hebrew, using the Septuagint. And then ask, what does that Hebrew word mean in the Septuagint?

Keith (14:16):

Wow. Can I read this? Let me read this. This is from Elijah Soloveitchik. It's what he says, for they will be satisfied, oh the gladness of those who hunger and thirst for tzedakah for they will be satisfied. And he says they will be satisfied and in the Talmud, uh, let's see, he says [inaudible], come and see that the ways of God are not like the ways of flesh and blood. These are the ways of flesh and blood. A man brings a large gift to the king. Perhaps it is accepted, perhaps it is not. Perhaps he will see the face of the king, perhaps he will not. However, the holy one, blessed be he, is not like this. If a man gives a coin to a poor man, he is worthy and receives divine presence. As it is said, Psalm 17:15, I, in righteousness, will see your face when I awake. I will be satisfied with your likeness. This is the meaning - because of the charity that I gave to the poor, I will be worthy to see your face and be satisfied in the world to come in the awakening that is in the immortality of the soul. How do you feel that one?

Nehemia (15:21):

So here's what he's done. And what was the verse? Psalm 17:15. Here's a bit of a problem. So here's where it gets a bit complicated. So what he's done is he's taken the word tzedakah, which in medieval Hebrew, and he's actually passed the middle-aged as he's in the scholarly, enlightened Jewish enlightenment. But he's taking the meaning in that period between, uh, let's say second temple Hebrew and modern Hebrew. You have tzedakah and in modern Hebrew, almost exclusively meaning charity. So when he hears the word tzedakah, he doesn't even think in biblical Hebrew terms (what does it mean in the Tanakh?) He says, what does it mean in post biblical Hebrew? It means charity, meaning charity given to the poor. To the point where you have a little box and it has a little slot in it, and you go to almost any supermarket in Israel and next to the cashier will be this, back when people used coins, and you take your change and you put it in the Tzedakah box. Tzedakah is a charity.

Keith (16:26):

And you are saying this is the context for him.

Nehemia (16:28):

That's a hundred percent how he's interpreting it. Now, is he right or wrong? We could have that conversation, but that's what he's doing. And that's why they don't translate the word tzedakah. Bear in mind, he's writing this in Hebrew and they're translating it in English. And so they decided to say, wait if we translate this as righteousness, it makes no sense. If we translate it as charity we've, um, people won't understand what we're talking about, let's leave it in Hebrew. So anybody who knows Hebrew will know tzedakah is charity, right? Where in the Tanaka it is not always the case. And now, is tzedakah even the correct word. So here's what I've done. In Accordance I go to Matthew chapter five, verse six, and I have the word [Hebrew], which is, I hover over it. And I could see at the bottom here, it says righteousness, justice. And, uh, okay, so that's where they're getting the word righteousness. Okay. And then Daliche translates that here as tzedakah. But I don't really care that much what Daliche translates it as, because he could be wrong. Um, what he's doing is about, is exactly what I'm about to show you, right? Although I have a computer to do and for him it was a lot harder. So I right click on this and I do search for lexim and I get that in the New Testament there is 86 places where this word, uh, [inaudible] is the feminine, singular, noun. And what I find out is, or what I want to find out is, not how is it used in the New Testament? That's important. But what I really want to see is how is it used in the Tanakh?

Nehemia (18:02):

And so now I go over to the Septuagint and I search in the Septuagint and I find this is the tap, tap, tap, tap. And I find this word is used in the Septuagint 13 times. And then I look to see what word does it translate? And I have here in the Septuagint Judges 5:11, and it's translated as sedaqah, right? Which is plural of tzedakah. And this in Toby, which doesn't have an English parallel, actually let me do this here. Um, did I do the wrong word here? No, there we go. Um, I had done this before and I got a different result, so that sometimes happens. Okay, here we go. So here I did this search here and I got, um, for the same word here, deokasona I get, um, uh, in the Tanakh 324 instances of this word in the Septuagint. And then I say, okay, what word does this translate in the Tanakh? In other words, they translated the Septuagint very mechanically. In their head, or maybe actually on a piece of parchment or papyrus, they had Hebrew word and, uh, uh, Greek equivalent, Hebrew word Greek equivalent, Hebrew word Greek equivalent, to the point where sometimes,....uh, professor Emanuel Tov shows this in a brilliant book he wrote of how the Septuagint is translated. Sometimes they translate it so mechanically, it doesn't make sense in Greek. You've got to translate it back into Hebrew to say what, what, what we're thinking. Right? Because they take that word, even though it doesn't mean that in the context and in the Hebrew, but that's their mechanical translation. Not always, but sometimes. So here I could see, deokasona is Hebrew tzedakah "and he believed in Yehovah and he reckoned it for him tzedakah/righteousness. Well righteousness doesn't mean charity there. Right. But it is the word tzedakah. So we have to see how, and there's more sophisticated ways to do it. We don't really have time to get into it. Here again Genesis 18:19, same words tzedakah. Here again in Genesis 19:19, we have hassid, which is a whole different ball game. Don't have time to get into it. Hassid is a powerful word. So packed with meaning here's [inaudible] cleanliness of the hands. But often it translates the word stakah.

Keith (20:15):

So in other words, you have some number of different Hebrew words that they use.

Nehemia (20:19):

There's a number of different Hebrew words that are translated by this Greek word. Right? And so that's where things get complicated. So you can see there that we can learn a lot by this method, but then you still have to, um, determine, okay, which word is it in Greek or which word is it in Hebrew that is translated? So, so here's the point? Which word did Yeshua speak if he spoke in Hebrew. That's the question? Did he speak tzedakah, did he speak (Hebrew)? We don't know. We weren't there. Uh, what Daliche is doing is saying, well, in the context, it sounds like tzedakah and that's often the Greek translation of the word tzedakah. That's what he's doing. Okay. And, um, now to jump from that to tzedakah, meaning, um, charity, I think is a big jump. I don't know that that's what he meant because a lot of times ,now let's do the word tzedakah. Now that we know what the word in Hebrew probably was, then we have to ask the question, what does tzedakah mean in Hebrew. Okay. Could it mean charity? Possibly in Proverbs, not so clear. You might be kind of reading something back from later Hebrew into it, but there's no question that most places in the Tanakh tzedakah means to faithfully follow the Torah.

Nehemia (21:42):

That is the, the, the, um, it means righteousness. And what is righteousness? Righteousness is following the Torah. Um, let's look for example. And, uh, let's see, Psalm 119, if I had to guess off the top of my head, will tell us repeatedly I'm guessing. I haven't even looked at this beforehand. Because I was, I was approaching this from a different perspective. But here, uh, okay. Psalm 119 verse 40, See I have longed for your precepts, by your righteousness preserve me. And throughout Psalm 119, there's these 10 different words for Torah. There's testimony, there's Torah, there's righteousness. There's your instructions. There's all these different words. Um, and then Psalm 119 verse 142, your righteousness, your tzedakah is eternal. Your teaching is true. And your teaching in Hebrew is your Torah is true. So the parallel of Torah there is tzedakah. It's, it's, uh, the same word or from the same, same word. So you have this idea of tzedakah could be Torah. Can it also be charity? So let's look at the meaning of charity. Um, and we're gonna pull up here in the dictionary and they're going to say tzedakah is loyal to the community and conduct honesty, justice, justness of the divine judge, um, community loyalty. We haven't even gotten to charity yet. Um, just cause, God's deeds of justice. These are the different definitions being given in a biblical Hebrew dictionary. It doesn't even give charity as one of them. There's some verses in Proverbs where you could read it maybe as charity. Right? Um, but it could also be that you're reading back a later meaning into Hebrew. Um, and really where that's coming from is this idea of tzedakah being a righteous act. So for example, Isaiah 64, verse five, we have all become like an unclean thing, all of our virtues like a filthy rag. And what's virtues? It's the plural of tzedakah, right? It's a virtuous act. It's a righteous act.

Keith (23:44):

It certainly wouldn't be charities in that situation.

Nehemia (23:46):

It's not giving charity to the poor, right? But so how did they get to giving to the poor, right? To where that becomes the predominant meaning. So this word tzedakah often has the meaning of righteous deeds. Uh, and often we can see that - I'll give you an example, Jeremiah, 33:15. In those days and at that time I will raise up a true branch of David's line. So this is the Messiah. And he shall do what is just and right in the land and the word there is tzedakah. So he's not giving charity to the poor. He's, he's doing righteousness, he's doing righteous deeds. And this is, we have this evolution from biblical Hebrew into post biblical Hebrew, where tzedakah originally is, can be righteousness and hence righteous deeds. And then we have this idea, well, giving to the poor is a righteous deed. And tzedakah then takes on the meaning of giving to the poor, right? And the Tanaka talks about giving to the poor. It has a completely different phraseology for how to do that. It's a whole expression - giving to the poor, taking, you know, guarding the poor, things like that. Right? I'm not forgetting the Levite, right, but this is specific. The term tzedakah in the Tanakh generally doesn't have that connotation. If it has it at all it's arguable. And, but so what my cousin is doing is he's taking it in the post biblical sense. Which could be, maybe Yeshua meant it that way, right? In this post biblical sense of giving charity, um, it's entirely possible. And then they translated that based on this equivalence that they had found, uh, from the Tanakh to the Septuagint where tzedakah is mechanically translated as righteousness. That's possible. I'm a bit skeptical if that's correct or not.

Keith (25:21):

Okay, now I want to do the least, we can understand what his thought patterns. Okay. Excellent. Can I, can I go to verse seven real quick, since it's six and seven, two verses that are missing. I want to read it from your cousin. Oh, the gladness of the compassionate, for they will be shown compassion For they will be shown compassion as we find in Talmud, uh, Shabbat, 151 B, everyone who has compassion on all creatures will have compassion from heaven and everyone who does not have compassion on all creatures, will not have compassion from heaven. I will tell you one thing your cousin's doing. He's not even giving us much of a comment, he's going right to the Talmud and saying, this is what it says. He's not saying much other than that.

Nehemia (25:54):

What he's trying to do is put it in a historical context. What he's saying is, uh, and he says this in the introduction pretty much, right? Yeshua was living in this historical context in which there were many rabbis teaching many things. And, uh, Christians will often say that here Jesus had said something new that no one's ever said in the history of mankind. He's come to set a new, a new doctrine, a new theology, new ideas that no one said before. And what my cousin rabbi Soloveitchik is doing is saying, no, you know what? There are people who said very similar things. And if you want to understand it, understand it in that context. And I don't disagree with him on that principle. I think he has a lot of, I think a lot of people watching this program will agree with him. You know, I once had this conversation with a Christian. I had the conversation with two different people. One was my grandmother who was raised Jewish, grew up in a Jewish culture, um, was active in the Jewish community. And I once heard her singing. I was visiting her and she was singing a song about rabbi Akiva, how he taught, love your neighbor, as you love yourself. And I said, grandma, where does that come from? She said, it's by Akiva. I said, did anybody say that before? She said, not that I know of. Even though it's in Leviticus 19. I've had the same conversation with Christians who think that Jesus is the first person ever to say, love your neighbors as you love yourself. And in both cases, both rabbi Akiva and Jesus/Yeshua were repeating something from Leviticus 19. Hebrew] love your neighbor as you love yourself. And what he's actually doing in Hebrew, or in Matthew, or.. Excuse me, what he's doing in New Testament, whether it's in Hebrew or Greek doesn't matter, is the Hebrew principle where the same exact word appears in two different passages and then you tie them together. And we have two passages with the word (Hebrew), and you shall love when they come and ask them, what's the most important commandment. Maybe we save this for a future episode, but basically ties in, love your neighbor as you love yourself and love the Lord your God. In Hebrew, it's the same word [Hebrew] and he takes that word and he ties into two passages into a single message as a typical.. It's great preaching, but it's also a typical Jewish way of interpreting the Bible. When you have a common word and then you tie the two passages together. So what my cousin's doing is trying to understand them in the Jewish context and specifically in the rabbinical context, because he believes he was a Pharisee. Whether you believe he was a Pharisee or not clearly he's, um, saying similar things to things that Pharisees of that time, and we don't know what others taught actually, that much.

Nehemia (28:16):

We only have the teachings, mostly of the Pharisees, a little bit of the Essenes. And there are parallels to the Essenes as well. He's putting them within a historical context. I think that's a correct approach. We just know a lot more about the historical context then he did because we have the dead sea scrolls. We have more of a critical approach to the rabbinical literature that he did. Um, you know, he's coming from an ultra Orthodox background and isn't really looking critically at the, he's looking at the Talmud as if it's this one single thing written in, maybe even at Mount Sinai, he believes. And so all of it is relevant. And I would say, well, no, it's written at different times by different people. And we can learn different things. Um, I do want to bring this, or should we save this for the plus episode? Because we can't read Matthew 5:6 and 7 without looking at Luke chapter 6:21 through 23.

Keith (29:00):

And I want to put a little pressure on you, Nehemia. Also is that when we go to the plus section, I want you to give us your translation of six and seven. Now, folks, here's what I want you to be aware of. Um, and I say this in all sincerity. Within the context that we're sitting in right now, I wish it was that we could go to a studio like this and they would just say, Hey, come on in and do whatever you want. These folks have jobs. They have to be paid. We have to take care of them. They've taken care of us with excellence. So when you go to the plus episode, you're actually supporting BFAinternational. And when you go to the plus episode at Nehemiaswall, you're supporting Nehemia's Wall and what's happening is we've got to continue. If we're going to continue to do this, we've got to take care of what we've got to take care of. And I mean, I don't the last time you checked it. Was anything really free anymore.

Nehemia (29:45):

I mean, yeah, my editors aren't free. So look, I've got my Makor Hebrew Foundation. You have BFA, Biblical Foundations Academy nternational, and this episode is a plus episode. This is going to be on your website. So we've decided to go back and forth and alternate. And, um, yeah, we're going to be talking in the Plus section. I can't wait to get to Luke 6.

Keith (30:04):

We're going to get to this.

Nehemia (30:05):

It's incredible, Luke 6 and how it ties into what may have happened in Matthew. Just really cool stuff.

Keith (30:12):

I want to throw something else out to you folks that aren't going to go to the plus episode, both at Nehemiaswall and at BFA International, we have so many things that are free, free, free. We want you to take advantage of those. We've got a Red Letter series. We're going through these verses before we had the point of texts. There's so much that's going on at both sites. I want you to do that. But for those that want to go with us, you're going to go to the Plus episode. You'll become a premium content library member. It's 9.99 a month. It gives you access to everything that we have including the Plus episodes. So we will see you at Episode 17, BFAinternational.com, the Plus episode,

Narrator (30:44):

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.