Hebrew Voices #109 – PART 1/4 Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament - PART 1/4, we examine the controversy about the Gospel of John which has raged for nearly 2,000 years, as we begin a 4-part series to … Continue reading →

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In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament - PART 1/4, we examine the controversy about the Gospel of John which has raged for nearly 2,000 years, as we begin a 4-part series to solve a textual conundrum using technology John could not have imagined and drawing on resources unavailable even a few years ago.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #109 - PART 1/4 Does John 6:4 Belong in the New Testament

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Now I want to get to John 6:4 and see what we have. What is the evidence, because there’s got to be a text. There has got to be evidence in a manuscript, in a document somewhere. It can’t just be, “I don’t like that verse.”

I am so excited about what we’re going to be sharing today. This is something I’ve been working on for many months. It really all started a number of months back. I was sitting with this gentleman, and he was really rebuking me. He said, “How can you have all these interactions with Michael Rood? Michael Rood is leading people astray.” I said, “How is Michael leading people astray? Give me specifics.” It was a bit ironic, because this man was a Messianic believer, and I said, “You have more in common with Michael than you do with me. [laughter] So how is it that Michael’s leading people astray?” He was looking for different things, and finally he said, “It’s John 6:4. Michael tells people that John 6:4 should not be in the Bible. He’s removing a verse from the Bible. How dare he do that?”

I listened to what the man had to say, and he wasn’t the first one to bring this up. I’d heard this from quite a number of people. I realized they keep bringing up this one verse. To me, it was a little bit strange, because I’m not a Messianic Jew, I’m not a Christian. This is one verse. You know, if somebody came to me and said, “Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, doesn’t belong in your Torah,” I’d be like, “That’s a non-starter.” [laughter] But if it was Genesis 10:26 or something, “Okay, we could have that conversation. Show me a manuscript where that’s missing and we can talk about that.” I’ll be honest, I didn’t fully understand. Michael’s going to explain why John 6:4 is so central, but it was difficult for me to fully grasp it.

But as he was explaining this to me, I said to him, “You know what? I’m going to look into this, and if I find out there’s no evidence to support what Michael is saying, I will sit down with Michael myself and I will correct him and tell him, [laughter] ‘You cannot be teaching this.’” I’ll say, “Look, Michael. There’s no evidence for what you’re saying. You can’t be teaching this in John 6:4.”

The next morning, I sat down with breakfast with my friend here, John Lorquette, and we were with a third gentleman, and I said to John, I told everybody what had happened... I’d had this conversation many times, it wasn’t the first time. I explained what had happened, and there was another man sitting there at breakfast, and he piped up. He said, “John 6:4 - Michael is wrong about John 6:4 and I can demonstrate it.”

I said, “Okay. Now we’re making progress. What is the demonstration? What’s the proof?” He said, “I asked this manuscript expert, and he told me Michael was wrong.” [laughter] I said, “That’s just someone’s expert opinion, and they may be right.” It really was a big expert. I said, “But I need to look into this myself.” I can read manuscripts, and I asked John here, I said, “Would you help me look at John 6:4 and find out, is there evidence to support what Michael’s saying?” I can’t prove Michael’s right or wrong; that’s ultimately something each one of you, each one of you hearing this, needs to decide based on the evidence. But what I could do, and this is what my expertise is, is to look and see, is there evidence to support his position? Or is this some hairbrained theory he just plucked out of the air, because he didn’t like a certain verse and decided to remove it from the Bible? And there’s a really big difference between those two things.

What I didn’t know at the time is that my friend John here had already spent 40 hours studying this very question, and he has done hundreds of hours of research. This has been an international effort, where I’ve been involved, John Lorquette’s been involved, T-Bone… T-Bone is this godsend who has been sent to us to look through Hebrew and now Greek manuscripts to study things that it would take me a lifetime to do, he does it in three days. Can we give a shoutout to T-Bone? T-Bone, T-Bone, T-Bone, T-Bone.

Congregation: T-Bone, T-Bone, T-Bone.

Nehemia: Yes. [laughter] We have a gentleman in Greece who’s been helping us with this project, Dr. Pavlos Vasileiadis, who, we would find something, and I would see this and I’m like, “This can’t be right. I can’t believe what I’m seeing here,” and I’d send it to the Greek expert to verify, and in some instances he sends it on to other Greek experts. The top people in Greece have been working on this problem. Top paleographers in the world have been helping us with this. We’ve been talking to the head of the Nestle-Aland project. All kinds of top experts we’ve been consulting, because I wanted to know, is there evidence to support this or not?

Again, I can’t in the end say, you should believe this or agree with what Michael’s saying or not. What I can do is present you with the evidence, and you decide for yourself.

So we’re sitting there at breakfast and the man says, “I can demonstrate it,” and I say, “Challenge accepted.” I’ve spent many endless, sleepless nights ever since working on this project, sometimes 16, 18 hours a day, because I wanted to get an answer.

Now, before we get to John 6:4, I hate to do this, because I want to talk about that. But before we get to John 6:4, the gravity of this situation is so great that I want to look at a different verse and talk about that. I want to talk about something in the Book of Acts, because we’re talking about a really big deal here. We’re talking about what many people… over a billion people in the world consider this to be the word of God and Michael’s coming along and saying, “This should be removed from their Bible.” That is not a small thing. You don’t take that lightly. That’s a very big deal.

As a Jew, I take that very seriously. Again, it’s like if it was Genesis 10:29 or something, every letter there is the word of God to me. So even if it’s some minor verse, “The days of so-and-so are so many,” okay. But that’s still important. So we have to take this very seriously.

And so before we get to John 6:4, which we will get to, I want to look at Acts chapter 21 verse 25. That’s something that John here brought up with me. John, tell us the story of how Acts 21:25 came into this conversation.

John: I’m having a conversation with a friend of mine, and we have slightly different views on how believers in the Messiah should live. I believe that the Torah is applicable, when Yeshua says that we should not live by bread alone but by every word that God spoke, and my friend has a slightly different view. He believes that believers in the Messiah only need to worry about the Ten Commandments, only the Ten Commandments. And we’re having this discussion, and he’s very passionate and observes the Sabbath, it’s one of the Ten Commandments. We’re discussing some of the things beyond the Ten Commandments and he says, “I need you to show me in the Scriptures a passage that shows that beyond the death, burial and resurrection of the Messiah, that believers in the Messiah were following the Ten Commandments.”

So we go to Acts 21, which is a story where Paul comes to James, and they’re discussing what’s been done in the ministry. James says, “Here we have all these believers in the Messiah who are zealous for the Torah. But there’s this rumor about you, Paul, that you’re teaching these things.” I’m going to read you exactly what it says. “They’ve been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise your children or to walk according to our customs.”

And in James’ mind, this is a false rumor, because he says, “We’ve got to do something about this.” I’m going to read exactly what it says here.

Nehemia: Let me just jump in here. It’s a false rumor to James, but to many Christians it’s actually true today. Am I right?

John: A lot of Christian doctrine comes from false accusations that are levied against Paul, unfortunately.

Nehemia: It’s ironic.

John: James says, “What then is to be done? They’ll certainly hear that you’ve come, do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses so they may shave their heads. Thus, all will know that there is nothing in what they’ve been told about you.” So James’ whole purpose here is, “We’ve got to show them there’s nothing true about what’s being said.”

Nehemia: In other words, that Paul actually is upholding the Torah according here to this account, and he’s got to demonstrate that to the people by participating in this ritual sacrifice, this ritual in the Temple. And this is after, according to the Gospels, the death and resurrection of Yeshua, which according to some people today, the Torah was done away with. When he said, “It is finished,” that was the end of the Torah. That’s what some people… John Chrysostom, we’re going to see later, says that. Yes.

John: So at this point we’re in agreement about what’s going on. However, the next verse, he’s reading from King James Bible and I’m reading from the ESV Bible. And I’m going to read it in the King James version, which is the version he’s reading. I read my version, and he stops me. He says, “Hold on a second. You’ve got to stop. Read that again.” I read it again, and then he reads me his version. I’m going to read King James version here. They said, “Take them and purify them and be at charges with them that they may shave their heads and all may know those things, whereof they were informed, concerning thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, keeping the law. As touching Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing.”

Nehemia: Wow. Guys, I’m going to read that again, because that’s just so powerful. Did you read the ESV there yet? Could you read us how it’s different?

John: The ESV reads differently. The ESV reads – switch versions here, “But as for the Gentiles who have believed, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed from idols and from blood, and what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality.”

Nehemia: Wow. Okay, so there’s a fundamental difference. I don’t know if you guys caught that. We’re going to go back over it again. But I want to bring you here first to what he says in Acts 15, because he’s alluding back, or referring back, to something which first happened in the Book of Acts, where there were people coming to what’s called the “early Church” and saying, “These Gentiles can’t be saved unless they follow these laws, these Pharisee laws,” so it seems.

Michael: Pharisees who became believers.

Nehemia: That’s right. And so in Acts 15, verse 20, he said, “You should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols.” In other words, in Acts 21 it’s reiterating what he already had said, “things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood, for from ancient generations, Moshe has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.”

In other words, the discussion here in the Book of Acts, originally in what’s called the “Jerusalem Council”, is, we have these people who aren’t Jews and we have to decide, can we even let them into the synagogue? Are they even allowed to set foot in the synagogue to be part of what’s called at that time, this “body of believers”? And the Pharisees say, “No, not unless they’re circumcised and stand before a panel of rabbis. Then if they want to believe in Yeshua, great. Otherwise, they can’t even set foot in.”

What James decides is, “No, there are four things we need to get them started.” These are the four essential things. “And then the rest they’ll hear every week in the synagogue.” To me, the analogy here is to Abraham. Look, I stole this from Paul - Paul of Tarsus. He says this, right? That Abraham had this covenant with God and he came into the land when he was 75 years old. But he walked around for decades uncircumcised, walking with the Creator. It wasn’t until he was 99 years old that God told him, “Okay, now it’s time to be circumcised.”

I think this is what Paul was teaching, and certainly what it seems from James is, “Circumcision for an adult is no small matter.” Even today, in Israel for example, it can only be done in a hospital. It’s a very serious thing. And the point here is yes, they can come into the synagogue and they’ll hear the Torah, and as they’re led, that’s what they’ll be led to do and keep. But don’t keep them out. Don’t bar them from joining just because they’re uncircumcised. They weren’t circumcised.

It’s easy for me to say, “Get circumcised,” it happened when I was eight days old. I don’t remember it. I remember a little bit, but anyway. [laughter] My mother… anyway, we won’t talk about that.

Let’s go back to the Book of Acts 21:25. This is the ESV. “As for the Gentiles who believe we have sent the letter with our judgment that they should abstain from these four things.” But in the King James Version that John is reading with his friend, there’s eight extra words! In the Greek it’s six words, in the English it’s eight extra words.

“As touching the Gentiles…” meaning “concerning the Gentiles which believe,” “we have written and concluded,” James says, “that they observe no such thing,” referring to the Torah that Paul is demonstrating that he’s keeping. That’s only for Paul the Jew, according to the King James. It’s not for the Gentiles.

The only thing they need to keep is these four basic things. So the Gentiles are allowed to steal, according to this. The Gentiles are allowed to murder. They just can’t drink blood. The Gentiles are allowed to do all kinds of things, just not these four things, according to the way that this could be read in the King James. So you’re having this conversation, John, with your friend, and he’s got his version and you’ve got your version. What do you do? How do you convince him? Did you convince him?

John: I can’t say that I did. [laughter]

Nehemia: Okay.

John: The first thing that I did is pulled up some textual commentaries and immediately they all say the exact same thing - that this is in certain manuscripts, it’s not in others. The general conclusion is that this text does not belong in the Scriptures. The fundamental problem we have – and this is not a unique problem between me and my friend – anybody that’s ever sat down at a table with more than three or four people, you’re reading different versions of the Bible. They don’t always read exactly the same way.

In this particular instance, I asked him. I said, “We’ve got to be willing to go beyond the text that we have here in our English pages, and we need to do a study and we need to determine what the original language of the Bible is. We have a variant here, and we have to get beyond this. The textual commentaries, there’s manuscript images that we can go through. We’ve got a lot of material here we can look at, and there’s a very clear conclusion that this text doesn’t belong.”

Nehemia: Can we look at the versions where this appears? Because you guys have to understand, a lot of times when you’re looking at different Bible translations, they’ll translate the same thing differently. Here, they’re not translating the same thing differently. There are extra words. That’s a very different kind of problem. We actually have here a list that John put together of these eight words, “that they should observe no such thing except.” Those are very key words, because that thing there is the Torah. This is a direct instruction from James, “Don’t keep the Torah!” in the King James. What are the different versions, John? Tell us what you’ve found.

John: Well, it does not appear in the NET Bible, the ESV Bible, RSV. Most of the modern Bibles don’t have it. The only Bibles that contain it are Bibles that are based on Textus Receptus like the King James 1611 and those Bibles that came from that similar source.

Nehemia: So tell people what is this Textus Receptus, because that sounds very authoritative, right? It’s the “received text”. It’s the one that Paul himself, or whoever, certainly that came from the Apostles, right?

John: Not exactly.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So what is the Textus Receptus?

John: We don’t have the original manuscripts that the Apostles wrote. We don’t have the original Gospels that the Gospel authors wrote. We have copies of copies of copies. There are 5,800 approximately - we’re finding more every day – 5,800 copies of New Testament manuscripts. However, those copies don’t always agree with one another. So somebody has to look at these copies where they vary and decisions have to be made. Are we going to use this version of the text, or that version of the text? This instance here in Acts just happens to be one of those locations where one text reads one way, and many other texts read another way.

Nehemia: You mentioned to me something about this verse that I thought was really interesting - that as far as you know, this is the only direct place in the New Testament where it tells you not to keep the Torah.

John: Not only that, but this is plain and simple language. Our Father is not going to make us guess what the Commandments are. We don’t have to interpret an allegory to find out, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” If He doesn’t want us committing adultery He just says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Nehemia: Straightforward.

John: We should not have to go through elaborate interpretations of Paul. Peter says that Paul is hard to understand. We should not have to go through allegories in Paul to determine how we’re supposed to behave. Conduct commandments are done in plain and simple language. And here, in the King James Bible, we have plain, simple language, indicating…

Nehemia: Don’t keep the Torah.

John: That the Gentiles should not observe, no such thing.

Nehemia: No such thing.

John: So this is a huge issue, because this has ramifications. There are many textual variants, and most textual variance are on things that have no bearing on your walk or conduct to your faith. But in this case, one version tells us that we should not obey the Torah, and without it, this story in Acts 21 is the clearest example in the New Testament of believers after the death, burial and resurrection of the Messiah, who are zealous for the Torah and keeping the Torah.

Nehemia: When I read the Tanakh, we also have what are called “textual variants”. What do we mean by that? So, we do not have the original copy of the Torah that Joshua wrote on the tablets of stone that were covered with plaster. It’s described in the Book of Joshua. We don’t have the original Torah that Moses completed, that he wrote. We have copies of copies of copies of copies. What we do is we look at different manuscripts and we compare them, and we try to find out what did the original say?

Now, sometimes the differences are very minor. For example, in Exodus 15 there’s a famous example where it says, “Mikdash Adonai konnenu yadecha.” “The Sanctuary of the Lord Your hands have established.” In some manuscripts instead of “Lord” it says, “Yehovah”. That’s kind of important. However, let’s be honest. Adonai and Yehovah, it’s the same deity, it’s the same God. It doesn’t really change the message.

What we have here between the King James Version and other translations is something that fundamentally changes the message. “Do no such thing” is a very significant difference. And what I love about this example is nobody, other than the King James only people, nobody disputes that these six words in Greek, eight words in English, were added. However, what’s interesting is they were added in a relatively early period. You can see here, we have a codex, a famous, important document, Codex Bezae, it dates to the 5th century AD, and it has those six words.

And I love what John did here. He went through numerous manuscripts looking, are they in there, are they not in there? Are they in there, are they not in there? He basically taught himself Greek so he could read and identify these words in the manuscript. In Codex Bezae the six words are included. It says, “Do no such thing,” in the 5th century. That’s very early.

Ephraemi Rescriptus is a really interesting Codex. It’s what called “a palimpsest”. A palimpsest means it was recycled. They took the original Gospel, they washed off the words and they wrote a different text on top of it. What scholars in the 19th century did is they went through this thing with a microscope and took special types of photographs, and they were able to read the erased words.

And what we have marked here in this 5th century… the original text of the palimpsest, it has the six words in Greek, “Do no such thing.”

So, two witnesses, and we can say, “Everything is established by two or three witnesses.” But what do you do when you have two witnesses that say the other way around? Here’s Codex Sinaiticus from the 4th century, and where we’ve marked there in red, that’s where the words do not appear. If the words were in the text, this is where they would be. And they’re not in the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus.

Codex Vaticanus, 4th century, the words are omitted. Where we put in red here is where those words would appear.

So, we have two different versions. And John, what I love about the story you told is at the end, the way you described it to me, is you and your friend were on the phone and you said, “You have your Bible and I have my Bible, and they’re not the same! In one they appear, and in the other they don’t.” Here’s Codex Alexandrinus from the 5th century, the words are omitted. P74 is a papyrus and you think a papyrus must be early. Not necessarily. This one’s later than the Codexes. It’s from the 7th century, the words are omitted.

Here's a quote from two of the greatest New Testament scholars, who wrote a book called The Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament, Omanson and Metzger. Bruce Metzger is a legend in New Testament textual studies. They write, “The reading…” meaning those six words, eight words in the English, “do no such thing,” “is a Western paraphrase of the intent of the decree of James.”

This is really interesting. These guys know that you’re not supposed to keep the Torah. That’s their starting assumption. And if those six words were inserted into the text - which they agree those words were added - that they’re paraphrasing what James’s original intention… “Here’s what James meant to say, even though he didn’t say it.”

[laughter]

So some writer in the western part of the Roman Empire, this western paraphrase, added these six words - eight words in English, six words in Greek - to tell you, “Lest somebody read it and think you are supposed to keep the Torah,” they added these words to make it clear, “do no such thing.” What’s beautiful about this example is this is not a problem of translation. It’s a problem of which manuscript do we rely on? It’s not that the translators of the NRSV took six words out of the Bible. They just based it on a different manuscript.

And if Michael could come along and say, “Hey, it’s not that I’m taking John 6:4 out of the Bible, but I’m relying on a manuscript,” then I think we can have a conversation. If he’s just removing words from your Bible, well, you can take anything out of the Bible then, any verse you don’t like, just pluck it out. But if he has an actual text, then we can have a serious conversation.

Does that make any sense? I hope it does.

So we’ve got these six words that are added. With that said, now I want to get to John 6:4 and see what we have. What is the evidence… because there’s got to be a text. There’s got to be evidence in a manuscript, in a document somewhere. It can’t just be, “I don’t like that verse. It doesn’t fit my theory.” That’s not acceptable.

John: And as Christian believers, we have to be willing to go beyond the version that we have before us.

Nehemia: Tell us how it ended with your friend?

John: Unfortunately, we never saw eye-to-eye. I asked him, I said, “Your version says this. My version says that. Let’s look into the text.” His response was, “I don’t need to.” I said, “One of these versions is inspired, and one of these versions isn’t. Which one is the inspired text?” And he says, “The King James.” [laughter] I said, “Okay, well, the King James was revised several times the first year it was printed.”

Nehemia: We went together to the Museum of the Bible. Tell them about that.

John: I happen to have a photo of my phone from the King James exhibit, which has many different printings of the King James Bible. The banner above reads, “150 years of revision”. So I sent him a photo from the Museum of the Bible. [laughter] When it ended, the answer was, “The version that’s in my hand.”

Nehemia: Wow.

Michael: There was even in the exhibit, there’s a version of the King James Bible that was printed, it’s known as the Wicked Bible. There was a misprint, but it was printed to say, “Thou shall commit adultery.” [laughter] Thank God he didn’t have that version in his hand.

[laughter]

Nehemia: I must get this version! How do I get it?

Michael: Nehemia, you were at the Museum of the Bible, you handled scrolls that were hundreds and hundreds of years old from all over the world.

Nehemia: Yeah, the Museum of the Bible actually has the most important collection in the world, the largest collection in the world, of Torah scrolls, and they let me there into the vaults, together with John, to examine some of these manuscripts. The same type of thing we’re talking about in the New Testament, we were looking at in the Old Testament, in the Tanakh, looking at these different Torah scrolls and comparing differences. There are no two manuscripts of any book that’s ever been written that are identical.

When people study the writings of Julius Caesar, that Julius Caesar invaded Britain and he crossed the Rubicon, we’re looking at manuscripts, and no two manuscripts are identical. Now, you might think, “Well, we know exactly what happened in ancient Rome based on the documents describing Julius Caesar.” We actually know a lot less about what happened with Julius Caesar than we do when it comes to the New Testament. In fact, the documentation of the New Testament has been described as “the best documented book from the ancient world.” There are more witnesses to that than almost, I think, any other book in existence, maybe even more than the Tanakh, because I think there are more manuscripts.

And the reason these are so important is what happened is, today when we go to print a book, we create a PDF, and they produce identical copies of that PDF. What they did in ancient times is Paul would send the letter to the Thessalonians. Then somebody would come and visit the Thessalonians and copy that letter, and they’d bring it back to, say, Corinth. Then somebody would visit Corinth and they’d say, “That’s a cool letter you’ve got from Paul,” and they would copy that.

This is how these books were disseminated throughout the Christian world. Because of that, sometimes errors were reproduced, but then sometimes also the correct version was reproduced. And sometimes you’ll look at the thousands of manuscripts and you’ll find the error is in the thousands, and it’s only a small number that have the correct reading.

That is the example with Acts 21:25. Those six words that were added that everyone except for the King James only people agree, were added. Every scholar in the world agrees those words were added - every serious scholar - those six words appear in the vast majority of New Testament manuscripts. They’re in what’s called the Byzantine/Majority Text. If you took the statistics, you would find a very high percentage have those added words, and only a relatively small number, in this case of early manuscripts, have the original reading where those words are not included, or they’re omitted.

So you can’t just follow the majority of manuscripts, and you can’t always follow, as we’ll see, the earliest manuscripts. You have to look at the evidence and see what support there is for something. That’s what we’re going to do with John 6:4. The last thing I want is for somebody to walk out of here and say, “Well, I can’t trust my Bible anymore.”

In fact, my takeaway from this, from doing this study, is that the documentation for the New Testament is astounding. When you compare this to any other ancient document, we have more evidence for this to support the reading in the Greek… And I actually had this conversation with John. I said, “When I taught about The Hebrew Yeshua Versus the Greek Jesus, one of the things I said was, ‘Don’t throw away your Greek text. That’s not what I’m saying.’ What I’m saying here is the Hebrew is another witness to what the original read, but the Greek is still the primary text.” John said to me something really funny. He said, “What do you mean? I watched your video. You said we should get rid of our Greek texts….”

John: No, no, no. I didn’t say that.

Nehemia: [laughing] No? What did you say?

John: But I had no recollection of you saying that. You hold your book out and you’re like, “It’s here in my book.”

Nehemia: I had to show him where I literally, directly said that. Because still, the Greek is the primary witness and it cannot be discounted. Now, with all that, let’s get to John 6:4. John 6:4, and here I’m going to pass it off to Michael, because Michael, to me, the question has to be asked before we even get to the evidence, the actual documentary evidence, what makes you think John 6:4 shouldn’t be in the Gospels in the first place?

Michael: That’s an excellent question, and I would like to bring us up to the chart. Now, this chart right up here, of course you can’t see it all, but I’m going to illustrate something on this right here, that is very important. This is the day that Yeshua is baptized. Matthew, Mark and Luke all cover or speak about the 40 days that he is in the wilderness. Then, the temptation, and this is also the day that the Pharisees send Levites and Kohanim down to ask John, “Are you the Messiah? Are you the Prophet?” On that very same day.

Then, the next day, Yeshua comes out of the wilderness and this is the Gospel of John. Matthew, Mark and Luke stop with the 40 days and the temptation. Then John picks up and shows Yeshua going up to the feast of Passover. Then, after Passover, he stays in the area of Jerusalem and baptizes. Then John in Chapter 4:1, when Yeshua finds out that the Pharisees now know that He’s making and baptizing more disciples than John, though Yeshua baptizes not, only His disciples baptize, it is at that point when He’s gaining popularity, that He leaves Jerusalem and goes up into the Galilee… 18 hours north of Jerusalem, it’s the woman at the well.

He stays with the Samaritans a few days, and then goes back to Canaan, where he had turned the water to wine before Passover. Then He does not have time to go and minister to this wealthy man whose son is dying. He says, “Go your way, your son is healed.” The man finds out the next day on his way back that his son has been healed, and Yeshua is then up in Jerusalem, just a few days later on Friday. Then the Sabbath. That’s the day he heals a man who was lame for 38 years, on the Sabbath, the day before Shavuot.

On Shavuot, the next day, there’s a multitude on the Temple Mount, and this is when it says the Pharisees are making plans to kill Him, because He just healed a man on the Sabbath day and then told the man to pick up his bed and walk, which is breaking Pharisee law.

It says, Yeshua’s on the Temple Mount and He said, “John was a burning and shining light. You were willing to rejoice in his light for a season.” It is at that point that Yeshua knows that John, while He was in the Galilee, Yeshua was in the Galilee, John has been put in prison. Now, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell us that when Yeshua finds out that John’s been put in prison, He departs from the Galilee and begins to teach in the synagogue. This is Him teaching in the synagogue. The first one was Nazareth, where He read the prophesy of Isaiah, the acceptable year of the Lord. It’s at the end of the week, because it’s on the Sabbath, it’s on the seventh day, the first day of the week was Shavuot. This begins the acceptable year of the Lord. This is from His ministry, the acceptable year of the Lord from one Shavuot to the Shavuot year, Pentacost, when He baptizes His followers with the Holy Spirit.

And so this is John covering all the way up to Shavuot, then Matthew, Mark and Luke. This is the training of the disciples, sending the Apostles out in the sixth month and then regathering, and when He regathers them in the Galilee, they all come together and they’re bringing a multitude with them. This is when Yeshua feeds a multitude of 5,000 plus women and children.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the one and only miracle covered by all four Gospel authors. This gives us a moment in time, a moment in which all four Gospels can be synchronized with absolutely no error and you go both ways and everything fits. There’s not a day missing. There’s not a week. There’s not an issue that’s missing in all of the Gospel records of Yeshua’s ministry – a 70-week ministry, 490 days from the day He’s baptized to the day He baptizes with the Holy Spirit. Already, you’re putting things together in your brain about the Book of Daniel and all. But literally, 70 weeks.

After the 62nd week, after 62 weeks, the 63rd week, that one week He’s cut off in the midst of the week. After three days and three nights in the grave, He’s raised from the dead on the Sabbath, and then the next day, or at sunset, it is the day of first fruits, and we count seven from there. Seven Sabbaths. So we’ve got 62 x 7s. After 62 x 7s we’ve got 1 x 7. We’ve got in the midst of seven and then we’ve got the seven Sabbaths that count us and bring us all the way to the finishing of Yeshua’s ministry, which is the baptizing of His followers on the day of Shavuot.

Now, we’ve got a problem. John 6:4 is among those four Gospels that record the feeding of the 5,000. But words were added, “And Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” That is the key. Ladies and gentlemen, I tried for 20 years to make the Gospel record fit, and I could not make it fit. The last thing I wanted to do is take out a verse from the Bible. But if those words, if “Passover, a feast of the Jews is nigh,” and it’s the end of the sixth month, John 6:4 is Passover, but John 7 is Tabernacles. Wait! We’ve got a whole half-year of blank space to get to a Passover that Yeshua never goes up to.

And then you’ve got another half-year of blank space to get back to the Feast of Tabernacles that He does go to. So Matthew, Mark and Luke all have Tabernacles right after the feeding of the 5,000. But what does the “Passover feast of the Jews” add in? A whole year of blank space, and that is the whole motivation… I’m not going to say what the motivation is, because we’re going to let the early Church Fathers and what John has found out - we’re going to let him tell you why they did this.

Nehemia: Excellent, wonderful. All right, Michael. Your explanation of John 6:4 being added has what’s called “explanatory scope”. If you remove John 6:4, then the Gospel chronology makes a lot more sense in the way you’ve explained it. And as I said in the beginning, I can’t say whether John 6:4 was added or not. What I can do is provide you the evidence.

What’s interesting to me is Eusebius, who is known, and we’ll bring the quote later, of how Eusebius believes in a three-and-a-half-year ministry. Even Eusebius admits that Matthew, Mark and Luke record a one-year period. Here’s what Eusebius writes in his Church History. Eusebius lived in the 4th century, he was the court historian of Constantine. He writes, “For it is evident that the three Evangelists,” meaning Matthew, Mark and Luke, “recorded only the deeds done by the Savior for one year after the imprisonment of John the Baptist and indicated this as the beginning of their account.” What that means is that the other two-and-a-half years of Eusebius’ reckoning of the ministry have to be before the imprisonment of John the Baptist, and we’ll see that later.

Let’s get a quick overview of the feasts. There are six feasts mentioned in the Gospel of John. These are John 2, the Passover when Yeshua is baptized. John 5 is the unnamed feast. We’re going to keep talking about the unnamed feast, the unnamed feast. That’s John 5. It says, “After this there was a feast of the Jews.” It doesn’t say the name of the feast. According to Michael’s chronology, that is Shavuot.

Michael: Shavuot.

Nehemia: We’ll talk about that later. John 6:4 is a Passover. John 7 is Tabernacles. John 10 is Hanukkah, dedication. And John 13 is the final Passover, of course. If you don’t have John 6:4 in that mix, then you end up with the cycle exactly like the other three Gospels, of a year. You have the exact cycles, Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Hanukkah, and then another Passover ending that year. And John 6:4 is thrown into this mix breaking that cycle.

It isn’t just Michael who’s said, “Something’s not right here.” There have been scholars for 400 years at least who have been saying this as well. Before we get to them, I want to bring a Church Father. The Church Fathers were these early Christian authors. We’ll explain more in a little bit. This is a man named John Chrysostom, and he really hated the Jews. He particularly hated that there were Christians in his day who went to Jewish synagogues and were what he saw as Judaizing. That really burned him the wrong way.

So he's commenting on John 6:4 and he’s dealing with the question, “What on earth is Yeshua doing in the Galilee, heading north, when it’s Passover and he should be heading south to Jerusalem?” It makes no sense, even to John Chrysostom who hates Jews, and hates the Torah. Here’s what he says. “How then, sayeth someone, does He not go up unto the feast, but when all are pressing to Jerusalem because it’s Passover…” you go to Jerusalem on Passover, “goeth Himself into Galilee?” That’s the wrong direction! “And not Himself alone, but He takes His disciples with Him and proceeds then to Capernaum.” If you know the geography, Capernaum, He’s heading north-east. Jerusalem is south-west! So what’s the reason He’s going the wrong direction and He’s leading a bunch of people in the wrong direction? Here’s his answer, of John Chrysostom, “Because henceforth, He was quietly annulling the Torah, taking occasion from the wickedness of the Jews.” [laughter] And this is what you end up with with John 6:4, which really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There’s a great movie from the ‘80s, one of my favorite movies, it’s a movie with John Candy, I forget what it’s called, but he’s driving on a divided highway, going the wrong direction. They’re going down and somebody shouts at them out the window, “You’re going the wrong way!” He turns to his friend and he says, “How do they know where we’re going?” [laughter] Yeshua’s going the wrong way! He’s heading north instead of Jerusalem for the pilgrimage.

Michael: The Capernaum synagogue is filled with people too, when He gets there.

Nehemia: The synagogue’s filled with people. There’s 5,000 people, it describes. What are they doing in the countryside? They should all be heading to Jerusalem, not standing around without provisions. Right? If they’re heading to Jerusalem then they should have food with them for the way. Instead, He’s got to feed them, because they were just out for an afternoon. They just came to hear Him teach. So something doesn’t fit, and this is important - Michael’s not the first one to come up with this.

John: Not only does it not fit, but this is a problem for all Christians. This isn’t just a problem if you have a one-year ministry. It’s not just a problem if you believe you should obey the Torah. This is a problem for all Christians. Even if you believe the Torah was done with at the death, burial and resurrection of Yeshua… Many Christians I’ve talked to – and there are a few – that believe that Yeshua went around purposely violating the Torah, but they’re a minority. Most Christians understand that Yeshua had to be the lamb without blemish. He could not be a transgressor of the Torah and be sacrificed as a perfect sacrifice.

So here we have a Gospel account, if John 6:4 is in the Gospel text, we have Yeshua not only disobeying the command of Passover but taking others with him and participating in a large group of people who are not participating in Passover.

A couple of days later He’s in the synagogue teaching to people who are not at Passover. You have this whole problem of an entire Passover that is being disregarded and Yeshua’s at the center of it.

Michael: Thank you, Nehemia. Thank you, John.

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