Hebrew Gospel Pearls #22 – Building Spiritual Muscles

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

English - January 12, 2022 12:00 - 35 minutes - 32.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 313 ratings
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Previous Episode: Prophet Pearls #16 – Beshalach (Judges 4:4-5:31)

Next Episode: Torah Pearls #17 – Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:23)

In Hebrew Gospel Pearls #22, Building Spiritual Muscles, Nehemia and Keith discuss how we know that scribes meticulously preserved manuscripts of the Bible, how textual criticism can strengthen the faith of believers, and why ignoring the differences between manuscripts can … Continue reading →

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Hebrew Gospel Pearls #22 – Building Spiritual Muscles

You are listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls with Nehemia Gordon and Keith Johnson. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, Episode 22, where today we will be talking about Matthew chapter 5, verse 13.

Keith: And before we start, folks, we’ve got a little bit of housekeeping we got to do. Every once in a while, Nehemia and I get a chance to talk to many of the supporters. People who support us, whether they're Plus people, public, nehemiaswall.com, BFAInternational.com. And whenever I know it's a real special time is you'll get me on the phone, and I want to say this was special, and I really believe that it's in line with what we're going to be doing. We got a phone call from a famous supporter, Dr. Mark. Do you remember what he said?

Nehemia: My dear friend, Dr. Mark. Well, I was speaking to him about some other matter, and he said, "Nehemia, for some time now I’ve wanted to talk to you, I just never had a chance. Now that I’ve got you on the phone, I want to share something that I’m having an issue with about this new series, Hebrew Gospel Pearls.” And here's what he said to me. When we did Torah Pearls and Prophet Pearls, he would listen to the program, and he would feel inspired afterwards. And he says, as he's listening to Hebrew Gospel Pearls, a lot of what we're dealing with is what's called textual criticism. In other words, we're comparing the manuscripts and saying, "Well, there's this and this manuscript, and this other manuscript, and they disagree with this other group.” And... can I share what he said?

Keith: I mean, we're rolling, man.

Nehemia: What he said was that every time he encounters this textual criticism - and he's a medical doctor - he says it cuts at the heart a little bit. And rather than inspiring him, it feels it's cutting at his heart. That was the term he used. And I was so surprised by that response and that reaction of his, I said, "I need you to explain this to Keith,” so I got you on the phone.

Keith: Yeah, and we had an amazing conversation. And when he talked about that, one of the things he said is... and look, folks, I've got what I call "the inspired" from the days that I studied in seminary, and when I first became a Christian, they offered me the big book and the little book. This is my Bible, and so when you start talking about messing with the Bible…

I’d like to tell this quick story, I told him this. My mother-in-law said, "Hey, I heard about this Hebrew Gospel Pearls, and just promise me you're not going to mess with my favorite verse.”

Nehemia: Is that what she said?

Keith: She said, “You guys can do whatever you want, but just don't mess...” And I asked her a question. I said, "Well, what if we could show you language, history and context that your favorite verse would be more, if I could say, clear... language, history and context, if we could give you something we could compare and contrast?” She says, "No, don't mess with my favorite...”

Nehemia: So she doesn't want it clear; she wants it to be what she thinks it says.

Keith: “Don't confuse me with the truth,” she said. “This is what I want.” Now, that's not what he was saying.

Nehemia: No, it's not.

Keith: What he was saying was, "Listen, you know, sometimes when you talk about, well, maybe this word might not be there,” it sort of cuts at the heart. But what he said that I loved, Nehemia, he said, “Just promise me that as you guys do that, and I have no problem with you doing it, but just promise me that you're also going to get to the application, something that's going to inspire.”

And so, I did something, Nehemia. I want to share it right now, a little housekeeping. I came up with seven touchstones. Seven things that throughout the Hebrew Gospel Pearls episode I'm convinced we're going to be able to touch. Now, before I read them, I want to tell the folks why you raised the bar again. Now, first of all, we're in the studio. They've upgraded the background. Terry and the group... I mean, this is not beautiful?

Nehemia: Yeah, wow.

Keith: Then I get the phone call – Nehemia says, “We're going to upgrade our research.” How are we going to upgrade our research? We've got - I'm going to call him “chief researcher”, that helps us, and then you said that you are going to let me in the secret meeting. You let me in the secret meeting.

What's the secret meeting, folks? It's where all of the information that Nehemia has in preparation for Hebrew Gospel Pearls, he actually let us sit down and talk about all that information in advance. Was that not an amazing...?

Nehemia: Well, and basically, you and I and this gentleman named Nelson, who is our genius research assistant, what we were doing is basically going through the process that usually I go through myself. And sometimes that means sitting and picking through like... there are 100 sources that have the word "salt" in them, and we're looking through the ones that are relevant. Some of it is a little bit tedious, but you also get to see the process and experience the process. I want to go back to what Dr. Mark said. Can we start with a concrete example, and then go to Dr. Mark?

Keith: Sure, absolutely. This is all connected.

Nehemia: Or maybe we should save those for the Plus section?

Keith: No, no, no. Because I'm going to tell you folks something. We've made a shift; here's the shift. We're going to go through these seven things, we're going to take a period of time for the public, and we're going to continue with what I call the Plus Study Partners. The Study Partners are the people that have helped us get here, and they're going to keep us going forward. There are things related to Dr. Mark - and I want you to come back to this- that really caused me to take a little bit of a shift. When you opened the door for this research process… And by the way, folks, we spent hours, literally hours and hours going through every word and every letter, and it just was an amazing process. But in the end, it allowed me to then say, "So what is the application?”

So for Dr. Mark, every single episode there are seven touchstones. Can I give them the seven touchstones?

Nehemia: Okay, go ahead.

Keith: You want me to tell you what the seven touchstones are? The first one - we're always going to look at the "Inspired Greek and English". Second - we're always going to make sure that we at least touchstone what I call the three T - tip toe, tulips, Howard, text. He sometimes tiptoes around because it's just a little too radical. He's from an evangelical so... you know, he does some things, he tip-toes around. Third thing - I call it the Jots and Tittles HGP Eclectic Texts. Nehemia, would you tell folks what the Eclectic Texts are?

Nehemia: There are two types of texts that you can put together when you're looking at manuscripts, it's what's called a diplomatic text. For example, BHS - Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, that is a diplomatic text. And what that means is every little dot and dash in that printed edition is supposed to reflect what's in the Leningrad Codex. So that's what it means that it's diplomatic, it's an exact reproduction of a specific manuscript.

Then there's what's called an eclectic text. An eclectic text says, "We don't have one manuscript.” Let's say, for example, Nestle-Aland, we're up to 28 right now. So they say there are 5,000 plus Greek manuscripts. What we're going to do is look at all the 5,000 manuscripts and figure out which are the best readings for each and every letter, for each and every word. That's what's called an eclectic text. There is no single manuscript, maybe, that looks like that, but it's taking all the manuscript evidence together.

Now, the diplomatic text, in order to make up for not representing all the manuscripts, what it does is it has what's called the lower margin. In the lower margin it has all these notes that will say, "Many manuscripts read this and many manuscripts read that.” And because that's in the lower margin, that's referred to as lower criticism.

There's higher criticism and lower criticism. Lower criticism deals with what's at the bottom part of the page in a diplomatic or an eclectic text as well. So this textual criticism is so-called lower criticism. Not that it's lower in importance, but it's physically lower on the page. So we're going to get back to a concrete example, but I'm going to shift over to you. Bring your seven things.

Keith: I'm calling it the Jots and Tittles. Why am I calling it that? Because you did a wonderful thing, Nehemia. In January of 2020, you said, "Keith, let's start sharing publicly the vowel-pointed text.” We did that through the Red Letter Series, but now with the Hebrew Gospel Pearls we're going to a whole different level. Number four – the Secret Vault Manuscripts. Those are the ones, folks... I’ve got to tell you something. He actually gave me some of these manuscripts years ago, and he didn't care that he gave it to me, because I couldn't read them.

Nehemia: And now I regret it!

Keith: He regrets it, because now I've got everything! But as a result of having all of that, we've got the Secret Vault Manuscripts. Number five - the Outside Sources. Those are things that we talked about throughout Hebrew Gospel Pearls; I have some of those things here. Anytime we go outside of the texts, anytime we go outside of Howard or the Bible, those are called outside sources. Number six - the Language, History, Context, Meaning. And Nehemia, I think we must have spent... honestly, folks, when we get to the meaning of some of these verses, that's where I just... layer after layer after layer, it's amazing. And number seven - in honor of my friend, Dr. Mark - the So What Now What application.

So for every single episode, we're always going to at least touch something throughout the time. Now here's the good news, folks. Up until this point we did the Biblical Beatitudes series. There is an interlinear right now available for all of the episodes of the Biblical Beatitudes series. That's the good news for all of those free folks.

Here's the bad news, or great news for some. Going forward, we're not going to be making that interlinear available for all of our free people anymore. And here's why we're not going to do that. We're only going to make it available for our folks that are supporters, and who I'm calling Study Partners. And there's a reason for that. Folks, I’ve got to tell you something. On the way today, Nehemia calls me up this morning. We're just talking, we're just starting, right? He calls me up this morning and says, "Hey, Keith, how are you doing? Great, great. Hey, listen, can you pick me up?” “Pick you up? What's wrong?” He says, "The rental car won't start.” Nehemia, is that true? The rental car wouldn't start?

Nehemia: It wouldn't start.

Keith: The rental car won't start, so he comes in with Lynell. Did you guys hitchhike here?

Nehemia: You picked me up, what do you mean?

Keith: No, did you hitchhike to North Carolina?

Nehemia: Oh, no, we took an airplane.

Keith: Oh, you flew. You flew in, you had a rental car, the rental car won't start.

Nehemia: And I told the people at the airline, “freely given, freely received”, and they said, "Okay, your ticket’s free.” No, that didn't actually happen, they made me pay!

Keith: I'll tell you wat you should have done. You should have said, "Hey, I'm doing Hebrew Gospel Pearls at this really nice studio, and so, as a result, I need you to have it free.” It's not free, folks, and I'm going to tell you something. We have done up to this point - I want to be really clear - 21 episodes public, 21 episodes Plus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We've reach tens of thousands of people. But because of what you've done - the upgrade to the studio, the upgrade of the research, the upgrade to the information, the inspiration and revelation - the Study Partners are the ones that are going to get the goods, they're going to get the fruit. The interlinear that's going to go forward is going to be for our Plus people. And I want to say that Nehemia, because you actually challenged me on this before. I got to be honest, can I throw myself under the bus?

Nehemia: Go ahead.

Keith: The BFA people say, "keith, you’ve got to quit giving stuff away.” And you know what they say? “When you give it away, sometimes they don't see the value.” Literally, I don't know if you've ever seen that happen.

Nehemia: When I wrote my first book, The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus, my plan was literally to release it online as a free PDF. And I had this gentleman in Jerusalem... I'll tell you who it was - Avi Ben Mordechai, who is this Messianic Jew… he’s actually Jewish; a lot of Messianic Jews aren't Jewish, he's actually Jewish. And he said to me, "Nehemia, if you give this book away for free, people won't assign value to it, they won't take it seriously.” And I thought, "Well, that can't possibly be true,” and I did some research and I found that it actually is true. And I can say in my experience... look, we gave away on both of our websites... I can say on my website I stopped counting at 200 hours of free material.

Keith: Oh, my goodness.

Nehemia: And there's probably 400 or 500 hours, I don't even know. And so, what we did here, at least on my end, we made the Support Team teachings available to people who support the ministry, simply because it costs money to produce it. It's kind of like the iceberg, and in this case, the stuff underneath is the free stuff, and there's a little tip on the top that's for the people who support the ministry. And people are complaining, they want all of it.

This happens almost every day, we get people from a country where they say, "I live on $2 a day, I’m using public internet, I can’t afford…” Okay, would you pray for our ministry? “Yes, we will.” All right, you obviously can't afford it, we're not going to hold it back from you. We call those prayer supporters. But if you can afford a cup of Starbucks, you can definitely support what we're talking about, and this is one of the challenges we've had - we have people who come and say, "I only listen to the plus episodes.” I'm like, "No, you’ve got to listen to the whole thing. The plus is a continuation, we want you to listen to both the public and the plus.”

Keith: So we've made a shift, is my point. The shift is, we're going to keep giving the information, the inspiration, the revelation. I'm just saying to our folks, "Listen, you Plus people, Nehemia's Wall, Support Team folks, BFA International Premium people - you're the ones that are keeping us to be able to rent the car, get on the airplane, do the study, the time, the energy, the resources. We're going to go forward at the highest level.”

But what we are going to do is we're going to make sure, in the spirit of brother Mark, that we always get to this point of application. So to be honest, the reason I'm saying that, sometimes the application comes in the first verse, the first word, sometimes it doesn't come until the end. But what we're not going to do is we're not going to cut and paste. Once we start, we're just going to go straight through, at about 30 minutes our public folks will say, "That's enough for me,” but our study partners are going to go with us to the end.

Nehemia: 30 minutes, an hour. We'll see.

Keith: So listen, Nehemia, also back to this issue of the cutting of the heart. What I've appreciated more than anything about what we've been able to do is I love looking at all of the sources - the Greek, the English, the Hebrew, and coming together within our best attempt - what was the language, history and context, the meaning of what Yeshua was teaching? And in Matthew 5:13 it gets good. So can we jump in?

Nehemia: Did you finish with the seven?

Keith: Those are the seven things.

Nehemia: Beautiful. I want to go back to this issue of the textual criticism. Look, we live in an era where everyone is one Google click away from finding out every single problem - and I say "problem" in air quotes, but every single textual problem with the Bible. And look, I get people who contact me almost every day who say, "I stopped believing in the Bible because I'd read some websites.”

Keith: Oh boy.

Nehemia: “And they brought legitimate questions, and I didn't have answers. And then I was listening to your teachings, and I saw - okay, there are answers. Sometimes it has to do with translation. Sometimes it has to do with manuscripts.” Now, what Dr. Mark said is, “We all want to believe that the manuscripts of our Bible are perfect.” And here's what I think most people of faith would agree... I don't know “most”, many people of faith would agree that the original manuscript written by Moses, the original manuscript written by the authors of the Gospels - if you believe in the gospels – those were perfect texts.

Well, we’re now 2,000 years later - in the case of Moses, 3,500 years later – what do we do with what we have? And we can pretend that all the manuscripts are identical, but one Google search will verify that they’re not identical, and then we've got a problem. And you could hear about this. You can go read about this from Bart Ehrman, and he will shred your faith, if you want to start with Bart Ehrman. He's got a lot of very good material, and what I say about Bart Ehrman - brilliant scholar – is, look at his evidence, don't look at his conclusions, because his evidence is - wow, he's gone through the manuscripts; he gives very interesting explanations. And then he'll say, "And therefore...” and his conclusion, I don't see how that follows from his evidence. But the evidence he brings is great.

So you can go learn about that from Bart Ehrman, or you can learn about it from Keith and me. Those are your options. And there's probably a lot of people teaching on these things, but if you come at it from someone who... Look, and I could have this attitude, “Let me show you how there are all these errors in the manuscripts of the New Testament,” right? That could be my approach. Instead, I say, “Look, I want to treat this text with the same respect that I want the Tanakh treated with.” And when I look at the Tanakh, I compare all the manuscripts, I see the differences, and then I say, “Okay, I want to get as close as possible to what Isaiah spoke.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: “I want to get as close as possible to what Jeremiah dictated to Baruch, the son of Neriah.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: “As close as humanly possible.” And that is a limitation, I'm human, right? So what do I have? I have copies of copies of copies, and 99.99% of the time, the differences in the letters don't make any difference whatsoever. But sometimes they do. I wrote a whole book about it, The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus, the one that I ended up not putting online for free. And so, there it was a difference of a single stroke. It wasn't even a word, it was a difference of one letter, and it completely changed the difference of what is being taught in Matthew 23.

And I'll tell you in a practical level, because I've been told this by many people, that that one letter changed fundamentally the way that people have been living their lives.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Because they want to live based on what Yeshua taught.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: And what did he teach? Did he teach amar or yomar or yomru? Did he teach you with the Vav or without the Vav? And look, you could just say, "Well, I'm going to interpret this to mean such and such.” Okay, but what does it actually say? What does the text say?

There was an example in The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus where a difference of one stroke of the pen changed the meaning and changed how it applied to people's lives, and the purpose here is not to cut at people's hearts. The purpose here is to prepare people as adults to say, “Okay, you know what? I don't have the autograph that Moses wrote, I don't have the autograph that Matthew wrote.” The autograph isn't the one he signed afterwards. Autograph in manuscripts mean the original manuscript written by that author. We don't have those.

So what do we have? Copies of copies of copies and translations, and back translations, and all kinds of different things. And what I want to do is empower people with information. Instead of saying, “The scholars tell me such and such.” And go to any university or seminary with maybe one or two exceptions in the world, and they will tell you your Bible is so full of errors, you don't have to worry about what it says. We'll be honest, isn't that what they're teaching in a lot of seminaries?

Keith: Right.

Nehemia: They're saying, “Don't worry about what Jesus said, because we don't even know what he said. Don't worry about what Moses said, because we're not even sure Moses existed.”

We’re coming from a different perspective. The perspective I’m coming from is – I believe Moses existed, I believe Yeshua existed. I believe Moses was a prophet, I look at Yeshua as this important Jewish figure who changed the world. And I want to understand what they said to the best of my ability. Do I always know what they said? Sometimes it’s a matter of faith and you have to decide, “Okay, here’s the evidence that’s been presented, my heart tells me it’s this.” And that's the best that you can do. You can pretend that you could do better than that, but that's really the best you can do in a lot of instances.

Keith: Let me just say something, you guys. I don't know if you also know this. We now have an editor that edits the Hebrew Gospel Pearls, did the Biblical Beatitudes series. Top of the line. I'm going to call that editor Y.

Nehemia: The Y source.

Keith: You know who I'm talking about! Y, you’ve done an amazing job, and I’m hoping that when I say this, they don’t cut it out. You said, “We don't want to cut at people's hearts,” I say we do. I say we actually want to do something that when you watch it, it causes you to be a little uncomfortable. When I used to preach in the church, I used to be successful if someone walked out. I knew if I could preach hard enough from the Word of God, if I could get someone to walk out, I'd always say, "Boy, I'm on to something.” And Nehemia, there's information that Yeshua teaches in language, history and context, that does not match... I'm going to say it. There are sometimes where what he teaches - language, history and context - that doesn't match my Greek Inspired New Testament, and I'm okay with that. Sometimes it cuts at my heart. We've had conversations about the Beatitudes that literally changed my life, that made me angry, one of them. Shifley ruakh- what does that mean?

Nehemia: The low in spirit.

Keith: And what does he say about low in spirit?

Nehemia: You put me on the spot here. I want to talk about salt and you... we're never going to get to the salt!

Keith: The point is it causes sometimes, say sometimes.

Nehemia: Sometimes.

Keith: It causes my heart to be cut. And through text criticism, I think the exciting thing is we can also get to that point. So Dr. Mark, thank you. Those that are listening, our supporters, we are going to be study partners together as we go forward. Nehemia, I just want to tell you, I appreciate the new shift. Because I’m telling you, I’ll spend hours with you. It reminds me of the old days, and I think people are going to get the fruit of that, and it’s going to be a blessing.

Nehemia: I’m going to get to salt before the end of this part. He’s dragging me back into a previous episode. You said, "cut at the heart", and Dr. Mark had that analogy. I want to bring a different analogy. You've lifted weights in your life, yeah?

Keith: Yes.

Nehemia: When you lift weights, what you want to do is - and correct me if I'm wrong here - but when you’re bench pressing, you want to do just at the edge of what you're capable, and maybe just beyond. And what it does is it tears the muscles so that they build back stronger.

I kind of feel that's what my objective is, because you could do something else. You could take the Bart Ehrman, and Bart Ehrman gives you - and again, he's a brilliant scholar, I'm not criticizing him, but he's coming from the perspective of an agnostic who says he doesn't believe in the Bible, Old or New Testament. And what he’ll do is he'll drop 3000 pounds of weights on you, and you try to push that, and you get a hernia. I don’t want to give people a hernia.

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: I want them to build those muscles. Build those muscles, and each time put a little bit more weight on to when they come to the Bart Ehrman situation, they find the website that says, “You believe in that Bible? That Bible's got mistakes on every single page, there are 5,000 manuscripts, and no two agree.” And by the time you encounter that, you’ve built that muscle and you can say, “You know what? I know the answer to that question. Maybe not that specific issue, but I know this type of issue. I know this type of textual criticism problem, where I’m not afraid to hear about these things, because my muscle’s been built and now my faith is strong.”

Keith: Amen.

Nehemia: Now I want to talk about this most irrelevant textual critical issue we'll talk about in the entire series.

Keith: I love it! It's irrelevant, but I love it!

Nehemia: What's irrelevant about it is Matthew 5:13 begins, “Ba'et hahi,” in the Hebrew it begins, “at that time,” and it's not in the Greek, which is pretty interesting. Am I correct there?

Keith: 5:13 says in the Greek Inspired, “You are the salt of the earth,” and yet, when we get to the Hebrew, there is this phrase...

Nehemia: It said, “At that time, Yeshua said to his disciples, ‘You are salt in the world, and if the salt shall cancel its taste, with what shall it be salted? And is not worth anything but shall be cast outside to be trampled underfoot.’”

So this phrase, “ba'et hahi”, “at that time”, in this section survives in 20 manuscripts. I went through all the manuscripts, checked to see what the exact letters were. And in one of the manuscripts, we have this thing, which is a bit hard to see in the black and white photo. Let me show it to you… if I can find it, now it’s all of a sudden disappeared.

Here it is, and I call this Manuscript K. You can see there on the second line of text, there’s something going on. We have the fourth word from the right, it's in the middle there, and it looks like something kind of strange there is going on, on the word "hahi". It's hard to tell in the black and white photo what it is, and until two years ago, all we had was the black and white photo. And you talked about how I flew here from Dallas to do this program. Well, to get images of some of these manuscripts, I flew to England. This is the photo I took in Cambridge, England, and you can see clearly what happened there.

What happened is, someone originally wrote “ba'et hahu”. Hahu is the masculine form of "that". Hebrew distinguishes between the masculine word "that" and the feminine "that", and hahu is masculine, hahi is feminine. It doesn't change the meaning at all. In fact, you could say one is grammatical and one is, obviously, a mistake.

And what happened was, the scribe who copied this, or maybe the scribe who proofread it, came along and said, "Wait, it's supposed to be a Yud, not a Vav. And so, he took his scribe's razor, and he scraped off the bottom of the Vav and turned it into a Yud, making it match all the other manuscripts and what was grammatically correct.

So here's an example of a textual criticism issue which doesn't change the meaning, isn't really important. What it does show is that there were people attempting to keep this text as accurately as they could. So in that sense, it's kind of important.

Keith: I think it's important.

Nehemia: It's important in that it shows the value, first of all, of having the color images, of being able to examine something more than the... The black and white image I showed you, what they did is they had a microfilm, and then somebody printed out the microfilm on an old photocopy machine. They had photocopy machines that were designed specifically for microfilms, and then they scanned the print. That's what they did.

And so, here we have a color photo that I took on my iPhone 10 when I was at Cambridge in 2019, and we can see what happened. You can see the marks where they scraped it out. And what this shows you is that, number one, these scribes are doing the best they can. It also shows you the types of processes that took place, of how we end up with textual criticism. Why did the original scribe make the mistake? Because he wasn't a Hebrew speaker, and in his mind - and this is a bit of a complicated thing, but let's explain it - how do we know if a word is feminine or masculine in Hebrew? If it ends in ah, and specifically kamatz Hey, then 98% of the time it is feminine. The word Torah is feminine. The word ishah is feminine, it ends in kamatz Hey. The word yalda ends in kamatz Hey, it's feminine.

If a word doesn't end in kamatz Hey, by default it is masculine. And so, to know if it's ba'et hahi or ba'et hahu, being the Vav or Yud, you would look at the word et, time, and you'd say, “Does it end in kamatz Hey?” And this scribe is copying, and even subconsciously he says, "There's no kamatz Hey,” and he writes "hahu". Except et is an exception to the rule, and it is feminine, even though it doesn't end in kamatz Hey!

And there are a lot of words like that. The word kherev - sword, is feminine. What could be more masculine than a sword, speaking in Freudian terms? But actually, kherev, sword is feminine, and so, you'd have to have a feminine adjective, in this case pronoun, assigned to it.

And another word that ends in kamatz Hey is Yehovah, that is not feminine, it’s masculine, obviously. Yonah, Jonah, the name ends in kamatz Hey, is masculine. So what happened here is the scribe who's copying this, and he's not a native Hebrew speaker, he makes a natural mistake for someone who doesn't speak a language that distinguishes between masculine and feminine, or at least doesn't the way that Hebrew does. So he makes that mistake. And so, the proofreader comes along and fixes it.

Keith: Now, Nehemia, most people would say, "Who cares?” Right? Now What, So What. When this happened, hahi, I said to myself, "I wonder if there's something else that we could look at,” and sure enough... can you tap-tap with me?

Nehemia: Okay, what have you got?

Keith: This is exciting, folks. Dr. Mark, this is for you. So when we say "ba'et hahi", we find that 67 times in the Masoretic text. "Ba'et hahi" is in the Tanakh. But here's the thing that's really interesting. I went to Joshua, chapter 5, verse 2. I want you to go to Joshua 5:2, and it says, ba'et hahi, in English, “at that time”. And then it tells something that happened. Can you tell us in 5:2 what it says, what the translation is?

Nehemia: Okay. “Ba'et hahi amar Yehovah el Yehoshua,” “At that time Yehovah said to Yehoshua.”

Keith: What?

Nehemia: “Aseh lekha kharvot tzurim,” “make for yourself swords of flint.”

Keith: Stop there. Go to Joshua 6:26. Read that for us.

Nehemia: “Vayashba Yehoshua ba'et hahi lemor.”

Keith: Stop, say it again.

Nehemia: “At that time Yehoshua caused the people to swear, saying, ‘Arur ha'ish lifney Yehovah asher yakum uvana et ha'ir hazot et Yerikho.’” “Cursed is the man before Yehovah who rises up and builds Jericho.” “Bivkhoro yeyasdena ubitz'iro yatziv d’lateha.”

Keith: Do you know that that oath came to pass?

Nehemia: It did.

Keith: Okay, then here's what's happening, Nehemia. In the book of Joshua, when he says "ba'et hahi", there's a shift. “Ba'et hahi, Yehovah said unto him, make flint knives.” This is going to be circumcision. “Ba'et hahi,” Joshua 6:26. And you'll find this, shift after shift after shift.

In the book of Hebrew Matthew, when we see "ba'et hahi", it is a shift. We're going to find it a couple times later. So when he says "ba'et hahi" what does he say? And where are we here? Read the verses in Matthew 5:13.

Nehemia: “Ba'et hahi amar Yeshua letalmidav,” “At that time Yeshua said to his disciples,” “Melakh atem ba'olam, im hamelakh yevatel ta'amo bameh yimlakh, ve'en od shaveh klum ela shehushlakh bakhutz lihiyot mirmas raglayim.” “You are salt in the world. If the salt shall cancel its taste, with what will it be salted? And is not worth anything, but it shall be cast outside to be trampled by the feet.”

Keith: Last thing. Go to Matthew 5:1. What do we find?

Nehemia: Matthew 5:1, then I have to open up a different file, so give me a second here.

Keith: Okay, I'm sorry.

Nehemia: No, that's fine. “Vayhi akharey ze,” “And it came to pass after this,” “ba'et hahi,” “at that time.”

Keith: Now, this is my point. Whoever is writing the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is trying to let the reader know, “Listen, there’s a shift that takes place.” 5:1 there's a shift. We're going through the Beatitudes. Now there's a shift again, and what's the shift? Now he's talking about salt. So now we get to talk about salt. But ba'et hahi, I wouldn't have even slowed down to look at this, Nehemia, had you not showed the cool little thing. Maybe there's something to it?

Text criticism that could have shifted my heart actually inspired me. It inspired me to ask the question, "What's the phrase actually doing?” Usually I just read... I read right past that in 5:1, but this time it caused me to slow down, and we find in the Tanakh "ba'et hahi" several times, there's a shift, shift, shift, and this is what's happening in the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

So, can we now move to salt?

Nehemia: What I like about the example, just to finish it off, "ba'et hahi", is that it doesn't change the meaning. Either way, it means “at that time”. In fact, "ba'et hahi" with a Vav could be read "ba'et hahi". Meaning, there's this phenomenon that in the Tanakh there are two different pronouns, the word "hu" and "hee", and both could be spelled identically in Biblical Hebrew. Both could be spelled with a Vav. The one with the Vav is still pronounced "hee", but it's written with the Vav. So it's possible, in fact, that it's not a mistake in Manuscript K, but rather, it's just literally a different spelling of the same pronunciation of the same word, and another scribe came along and said, "Well, in my source it's with a Yud here, it's with a Vav, so let's correct it,” but he was correcting something that wasn't broken. That's also a possibility.

Keith: So the Greek doesn't have it.

Nehemia: The Greek doesn't have it at all.

Keith: It's not there in the English, It's not there in the Greek.

Nehemia: What's beautiful about it is there's no theological agenda here to change the Vav to the Yud. No, it's quite simply what we call an orthographic variant. It's a difference of spelling. So it's a beautiful picture of what you can get from textual criticism, where there's no danger of theology, there's no issue of somebody having an agenda here. He either made just a dumb mistake, or maybe he was writing it in the biblical - meaning Old Testament - style, with the Vav. Both are possibilities. And when you get to see it in living color, you could actually see what happened that he corrected the Vav into a Yud.

Keith: I love the fact that it's in the Hebrew.

Nehemia: And we didn't get to talk about salt. You're going to make me talk about shifley ruakh again.

Keith: You can go now, my friend!

Nehemia: We have so much to talk about salt. Are we going to have to continue this in the Plus section?

Keith: Yeah, and you know what, I don't feel bad about it, and I'm going to tell you why. This is my point. Listen, I want to say this again, call me the bad guy on this. As a result of what you're giving us, there's nowhere in the world, Nehemia, in the world, and I have checked, where people have access to these manuscripts. Being able to look at these manuscripts, compare and contrast them with Greek, with English, and everything else, and to be able to get to the meaning of it... And I think, for our Study Partners, my goodness, let's keep going. I mean, that's what I think we should do.

Nehemia: All right, I'm going to end with a prayer, and then we will continue. We'll actually keep sitting here, but we're going to continue rolling the tape and we'll do the Plus section. We'll finally get to talk about "salt of the earth", which I'm excited about. Yehovah, Avinu shebashamayim, Yehovah, our father in Heaven, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to come here with this beautiful man of faith, to work together to understand the Hebrew manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew. Not to tear down people's faith, but to build that faith on a more solid foundation. To exercise those muscles and grow those muscles, that when they encounter the doubters, they know how to answer, they know the types of things that they'll encounter. And instead of undermining their faith, it will strengthen whatever faith it is that You've given them. I am so grateful for this, Father. Amen.

Keith: Amen. Father, thank you so much for the people that have put their hands to the plow. Thank you for the beauty of this place, the excellence of this place that we're in, the powerful opportunity we have. Father, I'm humbled to be able to sit here with Nehemia with this information, this inspiration and revelation to share with people. Encourage people around the world, Father, as people are able to do what they can do, we accept that, and those who can't - help us to come alongside and to support them also. We give You praise, glory and honor for this opportunity. In Your name. Amen.

Nehemia: Amen.

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