Hebrew Voices #72 – Hebrew Luke and John Found in Vatican Junk Box

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

English - December 05, 2021 12:00 - 45 minutes - 42.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 313 ratings
Judaism Religion & Spirituality Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: Prophet Pearls #10 – Mikeitz (1 Kings 3:15-4:1)

Next Episode: Torah Pearls #11 – Vayigash (Genesis 44:18-47:27)

The post Hebrew Voices #72 – Hebrew Luke and John Found in Vatican Junk Box appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Hebrew Luke and John Found in Vatican Junk Box, Nehemia Gordon talks about how he discovered Hebrew manuscripts of Luke and John! These manuscripts have never been shared with the public before this was aired and are particularly interesting when compared to the Greek text. They are also another proof that the name of God is unequivocally Yehovah and clearly show the pronunciation of the name Yeshua.You can download a full transcription and translation of the surviving portions of the Hebrew gospels of Luke and John from the Vatican below. Elvira wrote: “I am so glad you are getting this out there to the world. I was able to read along with the download of the documents as you read them out loud. What a privilege! What an era to live in!”

I look forward to reading your comments!

Podcast Version:

https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-Hebrew-Gospels-from-a-Vatican-Junk-Box.mp3

Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #72 - Hebrew Gospels from a Vatican Junk Box

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: And as I’m looking through the junk box, I’m seeing hundreds of pages from many different books, and all of a sudden I come across a page, and I look at this and I say, “Wait a minute. That’s a Gospel in Hebrew.”

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Michael: This is a day I’ve been waiting for for nearly two decades. What we are going to present to you tonight, I have been waiting for a long time since Nehemia came out with his original work on Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew, and we toured the United States over a two-month period of time with Raiders of the Lost Book – Discoveries in the Ancient Hebrew Text of the Gospel of Matthew. And Nehemia had, at that time, uncovered several texts of the Hebrew Matthew that had not been known, that had been hidden away in the archives of Jewish scribes for an untold number of years, and because of his research, we were able to solve problems that were unintelligible in the Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew, and also in the English text.

And so, these discoveries in the Hebrew text of Matthew gave us insights into the Gospels that had eluded scholars for generations. Now, Nehemia is going to bring forth some of the other Gospels that he has now found in the Hebrew language. We have Nehemia’s book, The Greek Jesus Versus the Hebrew Yeshua. This is where he lays out the detail of solving the problem of Matthew 23. And ladies and gentlemen, I suggest that you get these and you study them, because it’s going to lay the groundwork of what, now, we’re able to lay out after all these years. You are going to be the first ones to see it, and tonight I’m going to be the first one to see some of these manuscripts for the first time myself.

Nehemia, it’s good to have you back.

Nehemia: Great to be back.

Michael: And I am looking forward to what is happening tonight on Shabbat Night Live.

Nehemia: Well, so this is what we’ve been waiting several weeks for, Michael. I’m really excited about this. I told the people last week about the Vatican junk box, and it really came out of that research I was doing with Matthew 23. I had found these manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew. George Howard found nine, and I had found 14, and I said, “There’s got to be more.” And it turned out, by the time we did that video I believe we had 26, and later I found two more. But the process was, I would get these microfilms and I would put them on the reader, analogue reader, and I’m swirling them, looking through them, and one of these microfilms was in the Vatican, and it said, “Miscellaneous”. And I said, “Well, that’s interesting. Let’s see what’s miscellaneous.” And as I’m looking through, I’m realizing this is a junk box. They have a loose page…

Michael: What do you mean by “junk box”?

Nehemia: Well, you know, I was once told by a mechanic that when you put a car back together and you’re left with three extra bolts, you just throw them in the junk box. [laughing] So, this is what would happened in the Vatican. Somebody was reading a manuscript, maybe 10 manuscripts, they put them back on the shelf, and they’d see on the table there was an extra page left there. Well, what we do with this? We don’t know where it goes. We put it in the junk box, and this is how…

Michael: And these are ancient manuscripts…

Nehemia: Oh, yeah.

Michael: …the pages do come out and…

Nehemia: Oh, all the time.

Michael: …they don’t know what to do with them.

Nehemia: Oh, they open up a book nobody’s opened up for 200 years and there are worms in there, eating the book, and all kinds of things are happening. There’s mold, all kinds of problems you’re having with manuscripts. And so they would put these pages in the junk box. So, I’m looking at this microfilm at the National Library of Israel, and it’s a microfilm of a junk box.

Now, back then I only had it black-and-white. What’s new, and why I’m able to share this now publicly, is now I’ve got the high-resolution color images, because of this world-wide project of digitizing Hebrew manuscripts. And I’m going to show people here for the first time, some of the other pages from the junk box.

So here, for example, we have a page from the junk box. And you can see it says, “Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Apostolic Library of the Vatican”. And this is some page of some document that fell out of a book or was torn out of a book, and it’s some sort of kabbalistic work or something.

Michael: Yeah, it’s got a star…

Nehemia: Yeah, it’s got some weird drawings on it. It’s some kind of kabbalistic document. Here’s another page from some other book completely, it’s actually an early printed book, and this is a book of how to teach children. It’s got the Aleph-Bet with all the different combinations of the vowels, and there’s a picture here of the very simple wood etching, they call these, where the teacher has… it’s a spare the rod, spoil the child, it’s expressing. And it talks here about the young boy, and it’s literally a children’s book that fell out of some early book they had, or early printed book. Put it in the junk box.

Michael: Yeah, so it’s Hebrew, so it’s not anything that concerns them. Just throw it in the Hebrew…

Nehemia: Well, even if it concerns them, they don’t know what to do with it, right? Up until the last decade or so, the Hebrew manuscripts in the Vatican had never been catalogued. It was scholars from the National Library of Israel that went to the Library for the first time and catalogued it from the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts. Nobody had ever catalogued it, because they couldn’t read Hebrew. Occasionally, they’d look at a book here, a book there, they had some idea what was there, but they didn’t have a systematic idea.

Here’s another page which is from a book in German. I don’t even know what it’s doing in there, if it’s even a Jewish book. This was just a junk box where they put stuff. Most of them are Hebrew books. And as I’m looking through the junk box, I’m seeing hundreds of pages from many different books, and all of a sudden I come across a page, and I look at this and I say, “Wait a minute. That’s a Gospel in Hebrew.” And first I found Luke, and there were three pages of Luke, and then I found a single page from the Gospel of John. Can I read that to the people, what it says?

Michael: Please, please do.

Nehemia: People, this is the first time this is being shown publicly to the world. I don’t know where this came from, other than that it’s from the Vatican. Where the Vatican got it from, I don’t know. What’s really cool is at the bottom of the page…

Michael: And it’s just one page.

Nehemia: It’s just one page from John. At the bottom of the page you have what they call a hanging word. It’s a single word without vowels that is the first word from the next page.

Michael: And without the vowels that tells you…

Nehemia: Yeah…

Michael: …that it continues onto the next page.

Nehemia: Oh, yeah. So, what they would do is, they’d put the first word of the next page at the bottom of the previous page, so you’d turn the page and you’d know what to look for. And if the page is in the original order, that’s very helpful, of course. So, we know there was another page. We just don’t have it.

So let me read you for the first time from the Gospel of John from the junk box of the Vatican Library. I mean, this truly is a treasure. I mean, there are movies about things like this, like American Treasure, and I hate to say it, but The Da Vinci Code. There’s some treasure somewhere, we’re going to find, and I’ve found it in a microfilm of the junk box in the Vatican. And this has never been talked about publicly, as far as I know. And certainly, when I found it, nobody knew about this, around 17 years ago, or so.

Here’s what it says. I’ll read it in Hebrew and then translate it. “Habsora hakedosha shel Yeshua haMashiach kefi Yochanan. The Holy Gospel of Yeshua, the Mashiach, according to Yochanan.” Perek rishon, chapter 1. “Bereishit haya hadevar, vehadavar haya etzel haElohim, ve’haElohim hu haya hadevar. In the beginning was the word…” the “devar”, “and the word was next to Elohim.” Now, that word “next to” is the Hebrew word “etzel”. You might be able to translate it as “with”. I think it’s a bit of a stretch, but you could.

Michael: With, as in King James?

Nehemia: Right, and the word was “with God”. Here’s it’s “etzel”.

Michael: Next to.

Nehemia: …which is “next to”. And I saw them like, “What? That’s really interesting.” Well, you have this verse in the New Testament, it’s in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 20, “Which He worked in Christ which He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at his right hand in the Heavenly places.”

Michael: Ah, that’s very close to it.

Nehemia: I’ve got to wonder.

Michael: “Next to.”

Nehemia: I’ve got to wonder. It’s literally “next to”, right? On the right hand, Hebrews 8:1. “Now, this is the main point of the things we are saying. We have such a High Priest who is seated at the right-hand of the throne of the majesty in the Heavens.” So, I’ve got to wonder if that’s what’s going on in this Hebrew text of John that I’ve discovered in the Vatican. And it goes on…

Michael: That goes back to the Psalms, “Seated at my right-hand till I make thy enemies thy footstool.”

Nehemia: Psalm 110, okay, wow. So, “VehaElohim hu haya hadevar, ze haya bereishit etzel haElohim. This was in the beginning next to Elohim.” Of course, HaElohim is the Hebrew word for God. It says, “Kol hadevarim ne’esu bo, u’mibaladav lo na’asah devar mikol asher haya. All things were made through Him and without Him, nothing was made from all that was.” “Bo hayu hachayim, in Him was life.” “vehachayim hayu ohr ha’anashim. And life was the light of men.” “Veha’or haya zore’ach b’aphelot, ve’aphelot lochechiluhu. And the light was shining forth in the darkness, and the darkness could not contain it…” meaning the light.

“Vayehi ish echad sheluach meh’et Elohim u’shemo Yochanan, and there was a certain man sent from God, and his name was Yochanan.” That’s Hebrew for John. And it goes on and it says, “Zeh ba be’edut leha’id al ha’ohr leman asher ya’aminu hakol be’avuro, this one came in testimony to testify concerning the light in order that they would believe everything because of Him.” “Hu lo haya hadevar, ki’im le’haid al ha’ohr. He was not the light, but only testifying concerning the light…” meaning John.

“Haya ohr amiti hame’ir lechol adam haba el ha’olam. It was true light to shed light on every man who enters into this world.” “Hu haya ba’olam vehaolam ne’esah bo. He was in the world and the world was made through Him.” “Vehha’olam lo hekiruhu, and the world did not recognize Him, “bah el moladeto mamash, u’bnei beito lo kibluhu. He came to his true homeland or birthplace, and the children of His house did not accept Him.” “Lechol asher kiblu uma’aminim bishmo natan memshalah she’ihiyu bnei haElohim. And to all those who accepted Him and believe in His name, He gave dominion that they would be sons of Elohim.” “Asher hem lo midam ve’lo michefetz habasar adam, for they were not born out of blood and not out of the desire of flesh.” “Ve’lo michefetz adam noladu, ki’im mi’et haElohim, not out of the desire of men but from Elohim.” And then it ends, Michael. [laughing] Like, what’s next?! I don’t know!

Michael: The last word on the page.

Nehemia: The last word is “haElohim”, which means “God”, or “the one God, the true God”. And then it ends, and we don’t know what’s next. I mean, think about it. You know, the conspiracy always is that the Vatican’s hiding it. No, quite literally, the Vatican was so incompetent, they don’t even know what they have! They had no idea, it’s just in the junk box.

Now again, is this the original Hebrew? I don’t know. I mean, this is what we dreamed of - as a scholar, certainly - you dream of finding something like this – the lost Gospels in the Vatican. And here, we have four pages from a lost Gospel in the Vatican, and it’s not that they were hiding it to be malicious. They just didn’t know.

Now, I want to tell you a story, Michael, I heard this when I was in elementary school. I went to an ultra-Orthodox elementary school in Chicago, and we had this man come. He was a rabbi, and he told us how he would go into the Vatican at the time, and they wouldn’t allow him to bring pen and paper, but they would allow him to study the manuscripts. So, he would walk in there into the library, go through all the check. Of course, he can’t bring a camera, and we’re talking the ‘80s, right? He’s not bringing a phone. It wasn’t possible back then. He wasn’t allowed to bring pen and paper. He had to go in, memorize a line of one of the manuscripts, run out after about an hour, write down everything he could remember, go back in again, and this man must have had a photographic memory. That’s how he was doing it in the ‘80s.

And now, anybody who’s listening to this program can go to my website, nehemiaswall.com, and see the full text and translation. There will be a link there to the Vatican website where you can see the original document here. You don’t have to believe me, you can see it for yourself. I mean, think what a miracle this is. We go from where the rabbi is sitting there, memorizing the text - and he’s probably not interested in this text – he’s memorizing the manuscripts of the Mishnah they have there, and other documents. And we’ve now gone to the point where at the click of a button, you could find these things. It’s a miracle, Michael. Michael, this is a miracle.

Michael: Knowledge is increasing.

Nehemia: Knowledge is increasing.

Michael: Running to and fro with our computers at the speed of nanoseconds.

Nehemia: It’s incredible, Michael, what’s going on here. Well, can I read a little bit from Luke? I don’t think we have time for the whole thing.

Michael: Okay, well let’s do this. Everyone, get out a pen. Get out your Bibles, this is the time that you can actually mark in your Bibles and bring it right back to the Hebrew. All right.

Nehemia: “Habsora hakedoshah shel Yeshua haMashiach kefi Luka. The Holy Gospel or good news of Yeshua, the Messiah, haMashiach, the Mashiach, according to Luke, or Luka.”

Michael: That’s a lot more full than the King James has.

Nehemia: Is it?

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Nehemia: Well, that’s what it says here.

Michael: Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.

Nehemia: People can see it, for the first time this is being shown publicly.

Michael: King James, the Gospel according to Luke.

Nehemia: That’s all you’ve got there.

Michael: Yeah, that’s all we’ve got.

Nehemia: Okay, here it is. “Habsora hakedosha shel Yeshua haMashiach kefi Luka.” By the way, I’ve just got to point out here, the name here is written as “Yeshua”, which is a name that appears in the Nehemia chapter 8 verse 17 referring to Joshua, the son of Nun. Meaning, there’s no question from any serious scholarship about how to pronounce that name, Yeshua. No question whatsoever.

Michael: Right.

Nehemia: And this is how it’s documented in these Hebrew documents that we find in the Vatican and other Hebrew documents, and this one’s with vowels, Michael! That’s one of the really cool things. Now, I’m going to skip over the introduction. People can go to my website, nehemiaswall.com and see that. If you’ll allow me to start with chapter 1, “And it came to pass in the days of Herod.” I’ll read it in Hebrew. “Vayehi beyemei Hordos, melech Yehudah, Kohen echad ushemo Zecharia mibnei Aviya v’ishto mibnei Aharon, ushema Elisheva.” I’m going to translate up to there.

Michael: Okay.

Nehemia: “And it came to pass in the days of Herod, King of Judah, a certain Kohen, a Priest, his name was Zecharia from the sons of Aviya, and his wife was from the children of Aharon, and her name was Elisheva.” And this is it, Michael. This is the part…

Michael: Okay.

Nehemia: …that when I saw this…

Michael: All right.

Nehemia: …in the early 2000s, I was in the library and it was with every fiber of my being that I had to fight not to shout when I saw this. “Vayihiyu sheneihem tzadikim, and they both were righteous, lifnei Yehovah, before Yehovah.”

Michael: And…

Nehemia: And there in the Hebrew manuscript of Luke from the Vatican it says, “tzadikim, righteous, lifnei Yehovah, righteous before Yehovah.” And Yehovah has the full vowels! Which we now know from over 1,000 Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament. We’ve seen this in the Hebrew Revelation Sloane 273 from the British Library, and now we’re seeing it in the Hebrew text of Luke from the New Testament, from the Vatican junk box, Yehovah with the full vowels. That was known to be the pronunciation of His name. This is incredible. [laughing]

Michael: [laughing] It is. It is.

Nehemia: Okay, it goes on and it says…

Michael: Oh, this is beautiful.

Nehemia: All right. I mean, this is incredible stuff. It says, “Veholchim bechol khukei umishpatei Yehovah…”

Michael: There it is.

Nehemia: “And walking in all the statutes and judgments…”

Michael: Of Yehovah.

Nehemia: “…of Yehovah, bilti ormah, without craftiness,” which is really interesting. What do you have there in your English, in your King James?

Michael: “Were blameless.” Yeah, they were blameless, “Walking in all the ordinances, commandments of Yehovah, blameless.”

Nehemia: Wow, so that’s really interesting. I mean, it’s incredible.

Michael: Oh yeah, yeah, because they’re Kohens, both from Aaron, and they have so many more things that they have to perform than the average Israelite, and still they were blameless.

Nehemia: Well, here it doesn’t say “blameless” in Hebrew, it says “without craftiness”.

Michael: Without craftiness.

Nehemia: And what I understand when I read that in Hebrew is, you know, we’ve got these commandments, but there are always ways to get around the commandments.

Michael: Oh. Oh yeah.

Nehemia: And this is something the rabbis are masters of. So, for example, it talks about in the Torah, at every seven years during the shemita, during the sabbatical year, that if your poor brother owes you money, that debt is forgiven. So the rabbis come along and they say, “Hey, that’s a lot of money to pass up on.” So, they create something called the “Prozbul.” Prozbul is this concept in Rabbinical Judaism where you write a certain type of contract, and therefore the debt carries over through the shemita and survives and the man owes that money for the rest of his life, until he pays it off. So I think that’s what it means, “without craftiness”.

Michael: Oh, that’s beautiful.

Nehemia: I mean, you talk about legalism, there’s a lot of things in Jewish tradition. You know, one of the things the rabbis do, of course, is they create these fences around the Torah, what Yeshua called the “heavy burdens” that they load on the people, and they won’t lift one finger to do them themselves. But then, in other instances they do something different. They say, “Hey, these commandments are too hard, the ones God actually tells us to do, because we’re so busy doing our man-made takanot, our man-made, rules and regulations.” So, they come up with these loopholes to get out doing the actual commandments of God, and I think that’s what it means when it says, “without craftiness”.

Michael: That’s interesting. Now, even if we don’t get into these other things, at any time like this, just speak up, because that craftiness, you know, the shemita, when they started it out the rabbis sold the whole land of Israel to an Arab for the year…

Nehemia: That’s craftiness.

Michael: …so it didn’t belong to a Jew.

Nehemia: Right.

Michael: …and so, they could continue planting and harvesting, and then it reverted back. That craftiness is very evident.

Nehemia: There’s a reason Jews are such good lawyers. [laughing] And I’m not trying to be funny.

Michael: No.

Nehemia: Really, they’re dealing with the Torah and trying to think, “Wow, God commanded us to do that. We don’t want to do it. There’s got to be some way where we can throw away the spirit of the law, but through the letter of the law, get out of actually doing it.” And I think that’s what the craftiness is. I mean, Jews are trained to do this, and then you apply that to other laws, and you might make a very good lawyer.

Let me jump ahead here. “They did not have children. Elisheva was barren, and both of them were advanced in years. And the Kohen, Zecharia, had the priesthood before.” And it says in Hebrew, this is really interesting, it says, “before Yehovah…”

Michael: Ah.

Nehemia: “…in the order of his family, according to the custom of the service of the priesthood. The lot fell upon him to present the incense, and he came into the sanctuary of Yehovah.” And that’s the first word on the page! We turn the page here, and we get to the top of the page, and literally the first word it says at the end of the last page it says, “the sanctuary of…” and the first word there, the upper right, anybody can see it, it says, “Yehovah” just like it has…

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: …every time in this document with the full vowels. Incredible. Let’s go on, and it says, “And all the throng of the people were standing outside to pray at the time of the incense. And the angel of Yehovah appeared to him standing at the right of the altar of incense, and Zecharia, when he saw him, was terrified and fear seized hold of him. And the angel said to him, ‘Do not fear, Zecharia, for your prayer is heard. And Elisheva, your wife, will give birth to a son. And you shall call his name Yochanan, and there shall be to you joy and happiness. And many will be happy at the time of his birth, for he will be great before Yehovah, and will not drink wine or strong drink. And he will be filled from the Ru’ach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit, from the womb of his mother. And he will turn many of the Children of Israel to Yehovah, their Elohim. And he will walk before Him in the spirit and power of Eliyahu to return the heart of the fathers to the sons. And he will return the heretics to the righteousness of the righteous ones.’” That’s pretty cool. That’s kind of different from what you’ve got in the Greek.

“And to prepare to Yehovah, prepare to Yehovah the people.” Prepared… Now, I want to stop there for a second. I don’t think we’re going to be able to read the whole thing. I want to go back to the name.

Michael: Okay.

Nehemia: We’re seeing here the name in a Hebrew Gospel from the Vatican junk box with the vowels “Yehovah”! And there’s one more thing, I hope we have time to get to. But I want to talk about something about the name.

One of the things you hear from scholars, there’s actual solid scholarship out there from Gesenius, who we’ve mentioned him before. He was the great Hebrew grammarian, really of the last 200 years. And although he got a bunch of things wrong, he really was a great grammarian. One of the things he says is, “Those vowels that people think are the name Yehovah,” and in English it became Jehovah, “those are the wrong vowels.” And one of the arguments he brings is what’s called the “preposition argument”. It’s called the “inseparable prepositions” or more accurately, for those who actually know Hebrew, “the inseparable particles”.

So, the inseparable particle argument is that when the name Yehovah is preceded by certain letters that are attached to the word – I don’t want to get too complicated here – that the first letter is silent just like it’s in Adonai. And I want to show what Adonai looks like. Adonai is the way Jews traditionally read this. And here we have a manuscript, this is a manuscript from the Russian National Library, EVR B52. And I call this, Michael, “the B52 bomber of Hebrew manuscripts”, because this proves definitively, puts to rest the whole issue of the vowels. Now, bear with me, people, for one moment here.

It says, “la’Adonai”. That is the word “Adonai” with what’s called the inseparable preposition, or inseparable particle. And the la’ is attached to the word, and it has the vowel you would expect for Adonai. But one of the important things here is that the first letter of Adonai is silent. Why is it silent? Because in Hebrew you have la-A-donai, so la’A is a contraction, just like you say in English, “cannot” becomes “can’t”. It’s a typical contraction, it’s called the “allision of the Aleph” in Hebrew linguistics, “la’Adonai”. silent Aleph. So, there’s no vowel in the Aleph when it has the attached preposition. This is the inseparable particle. No Aleph and I don’t know, why do we care about this? This is normal, you find this in every single manuscript, every printed Bible.

What we discovered in B52, which became the B52 bomber of Hebrew manuscripts, is that when Yehovah is preceded by the attached preposition, it has the full vowels, “Ye-ho-vah”. Now, I just told you, the first letter of Adonai is silent. There’s no vowel in that letter. And what we’ve been told for 200 years, since the time of Gesenius, is that the vowels of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, the vowels of the name are the vowels of Adonai. And therefore, the vowel in the Yud of Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey represents the Aleph of Adonai. In fact, in the B52 manuscript, in the B52 bomber, there is no vowel in the Yud – or let me re-phrase that correctly. There is a vowel in the Yud!

Michael: Right.

Nehemia: We expect there to be no vowel based on Gesenius, but in fact it has the full vowels, and what I can say definitively without question is these are the vowels of the name. They can’t be the vowels of Adonai. Now, what does this have to do with the Hebrew Gospels that we discovered in the Vatican junk box, that I discovered 17 or 18 years ago? So, you open up there, and in Luke we just read the verse in Luke, and there it says…

Michael: Yes.

Nehemia: “To prepare for Yehovah” or “to Yehovah, the people,” and it’s “la’Yehovah” with the full vowels! In Adonai, that first letter should have no vowel, but the fact that it has “la’Yehovah” in the B52 bomber Hebrew manuscript, now in over 150 manuscripts of the Old Testament, we know it has this exact same thing. And it’s even in the Gospel of Luke in Hebrew! Proving definitely from a linguistic perspective, that these are the true vowels of the name itself, not the vowels of Adonai, even in the Hebrew Gospel of Luke from the Vatican. [laughing]

Michael: Amen. Amen. I’m not going to have time for Nehemia to go through and translate it all, but in verse 25 of chapter 1, this is what Elizabeth said after she conceives. She says, “Thus hath Yehovah dealt with me in the days wherein He looked upon me to take away my reproach among men.” So, that word “Lord” there is “Yehovah” with all the proper…

Nehemia: With the vowels.

Michael: …vowels included.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: And Nehemia - start us off.

Nehemia: I’m going to read a little bit more. So, we’ve seen the name “Yehovah” here in this Hebrew Luke from the Vatican. The name “Yeshua” is also there. Can we get to that? [laughing]

Michael: Okay, all right. Wow…

Nehemia: All right. “And in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from Yehovah in a city of Galilee, and its name was Nazareth, to a certain virgin…” And it’s interesting there, the Hebrew word for “virgin” is “betullah”, “…to a certain betullah who was betrothed to a man, and his name was Yosef from the house of David. And the name of the virgin, the betullah, was Miriam.” Let me read this now in Hebrew. “U’bevo hamalech eleha amar, and when the angel came to her, he said, ‘Shalom, lich, mele’at chen. Yehovah imach, mevorechet at bein hanashim. And when the angel came to her, he said, ‘Shalom to you…’” meaning “peace”, and this is the greeting in Hebrew, “Shalom to you, she who is full of grace. Yehovah be with you,” or “Yehovah is with you.” And I love that in Hebrew, because that’s exactly what Boaz said to the harvesters in Ruth, and it’s exactly what the angels said to Gideon. And in the Mishnah it says that this is the way the ancient Israelites would greet one another in the name, saying, “Yehovah be with you. Yehovah with you.” And that’s what the angel says to her.

Michael: And this is one of Ruth’s descendants. Wow.

Nehemia: [laughing] “Yehovah be with you. You are blessed among women. And she looked and was frightened because of his words and she was thinking, ‘What sort of shalom was this?’” meaning he said to her, “Shalom to you,” and she’s thinking, “What sort of shalom was this?”

Michael: What shalom is this? [laughing]

Nehemia: What sort of peace is this, or greeting? “And the angel said to her, ‘Do not fear, Miriam, for you have found favor before Yehovah. Behold, you are pregnant and will give birth to a son…’” I’m going to read this in Hebrew, “Vekarat shemo Yeshua, and you will call His name Yeshua. Zeh yihyeh gadol, this one will be great, veyikarei ‘Ben Elyon’, and He will be called ‘Son of the most High’. Veyiten lo Yehovah kisseh David aviv. And Yehovah, Elohim, will give Him the throne of David, his father, veyimlokh al beit Yaakov le’olam, and He will reign over the house of Yaakov, of Jacob, forever. Ve’lo yihey ketz lemalchuto, there will no end to His kingdom.’”

“And Miriam said to the angel, ‘How will this be, for I have not known a man?’ And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The spirit of holiness will enter you,” and this is interesting, “and an exalted might will be in your shadow, or in your protection…”

Michael: Oh, wow.

Nehemia: …which is not quite what it says in the Greek. It’s very interesting.

Michael: Right.

Nehemia: And I’ve got to read this part in Hebrew, and this is the end, the last words here in Luke. “Al hasher ihiye hanolad kadosh yikareh ben Yehovah, because He that will be born will be holy, he shall be called ben Yehovah, Son of Yehovah.”

Michael: Aha.

Nehemia: And that’s what we find…

Michael: That’s beautiful.

Nehemia: …in the junk box in the Vatican. [laughing]

Michael: That. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t get any better from the junk box in the Vatican than that right there. That is just incredible.

Nehemia: And it’s just been sitting there for who knows how many centuries, and they don’t even know they have it.

Michael: And there it is. Right in the Hebrew, there’s no other way to pronounce it, Yeshua. Yeshua.

Nehemia: It’s written right there with the vowels, right?

Michael: And the same thing in the Hebrew Matthew.

Nehemia: Absolutely. And look, there are people who say, “Yahshua” and things like that.

Michael: And I was one of those people. I think I’ve got a DVD on it.

Nehemia: Well, I mean, I could only call that “pseudo-Hebrew…”

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: …because the way those letters are written can’t be pronounced “Yahshua”. It doesn’t fit the rules of Hebrew phonology, and maybe we’ll do one of the Q&As on that. And what’s interesting is there isn’t a doubt, there isn’t a debate and scholarly literature about the name Yeshua. The only real debate is about the name Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, whether those are the vowels of Adonai, or those are the actual vowels of the name. And then the whole “Yahweh” thing, we talked about that in an earlier episode. And really, this document, along with over 150 manuscripts of the Old Testament with the B52 bomber, with the definitive proof that it has what’s called the “inseparable preposition” proves definitively that that is actually the vowels of the name, “Yehovah”. It can’t be the vowels of Adonai.

And Michael, I mean, I am so blessed. You know, people would often say, “What period of history do you want to live in?” And look, okay, I would have liked to have been at Mount Sinai. But other than that, maybe to have met Yeshua. But other than that, there’s no other period of history I want to have lived in other than today.

Michael: Right now. Right now.

Nehemia: Right now, this moment, we’re living in a period where knowledge is increasing as it talks about in the Book of Daniel! I feel like we’re living in what it describes in the Book of Acts, where it talks about the “restoration of all things”. Can you read that, Michael?

Michael: Yeah, yeah. I want to read that.

Nehemia: I think we’re living in that period of history.

Michael: Because this the disciples, and they have just healed the man who was lame. He’s at the Nicanor Gate, the beautiful gate. And now they’re speaking to the people, and speaking and saying, “The times of refreshing shall come from the presence of Yehovah. And He shall send Yeshua, Messiah, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution or restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of the Holy Prophets since the world began. This is a time that was promised.” And Nehemia, why do you see these discoveries, why are they so important in our time? Because the Jews are looking for the coming of the Messiah. Here, these Jews were saying that the heavens must receive the Messiah until the restoration of all things, and we’re seeing things restored that we never imagined. The Gentiles could never have imagined the stuff that’s going on right now.

Nehemia: Well, Michael, I see this as part of a pattern, a pattern of history, of restoration. And it’s interesting, this isn’t a new doctrine, what He said. He says, “This restoration is something spoken by the prophets.” So, when I hear that I say, “Well, which prophets?” And I look at what’s happened starting in the 1800’s, we had the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. They were scattered throughout the Diaspora and began to return in large numbers in the 1800’s. We had the restoration of the Hebrew language, which is prophesied in Zephaniah, we’ll get to that in a minute. The return of Jewish sovereignty after 2,000 years, the liberation of the Temple Mount and the rest of Jerusalem. I mean, we have a psalm about how Jerusalem is united as a city, and it actually happened in 1967. The restoration of the calendar, the restoration now of the name, and the discovery of these Hebrew Gospels. I have to wonder if this isn’t part of this whole pattern of restoration.

And I’m not a Christian, I’m not a Messianic Jew. But I’m seeing these restorations even of these ancient Hebrew documents, I think this could be part of the pattern. And it gets me excited, Michael, because I ask the question, Michael, “What’s next?” If we’ve seen all these things restored in our lifetime, many of these in my lifetime, things you’d never expect to have happened… I mean, I’ve shared this with you before on the program about how in the ‘80’s the Jewish leadership was talking about how it would take centuries to liberate the Jews from the Soviet Union, and now over one million Jews have returned. I mean, the return of the Jews from Ethiopia, we are seeing restoration, people waking up around the world and realizing they’ve been called to the God of Israel, that’s the Isaiah 56 prophesy.

Michael, I want to read one prophesy to you, Jeremiah 32:41. This is part of what it’s talking about in Acts 3:21. What’s really interesting about this verse, let me read it, and this is talking about the return of the exiles. God bringing the exiles back and planting them in their land. He says, “I will rejoice over you to do good to you, and I will plant them in this land in truth with all My heart and with all My soul.” And you know, Michael, in the entire Bible it talks repeatedly about loving God with all your heart and all your soul. It’s in the Shema. When they asked Yeshua what’s the most important commandment, He said to them, “Shema Yisrael, Hear O Israel, Yehovah Eloheinu, Yehovah Echad. Yehovah is our Elohim, Yehovah is One.” And then he says, “Ve’ahavta et Yehovah Elochecha, and you shall love Yehovah with all your heart, u’bechol nafshecha, u’bechol meodecha, and with all your soul and all your might.” And in all of the entire Bible there’s only one place where God says He will do something with all His heart and all His soul, and that is planting the people of Israel back in their land.

That’s not some small, trivial thing. That is the only thing God ever said He’ll do with all His heart and all His soul, and He’s done it. It’s begun to happen. It hasn’t been completed. We still have millions of Jews in the Diaspora and the 10 lost tribes, so there’s ways to go. But it’s beginning to happen, and God does that with all His heart and soul!

Michael: Oh, that’s incredible. And Jeremiah 32, this is right after he receives a revelation that his cousin is going to come in to the prison and offer for Jeremiah to buy some land. And he puts the title deeds in an earthen vessel and to bury it in that land, and he says that this is going to happen…

Nehemia: Right.

Michael: …that Israel’s going to come back one day.

Nehemia: And I love that prophesy, because you know, I know where Jeremiah was from and I’ve been to that place, the village of Anathoth. I mean, it’s an incredible image there. They’re buying and selling land, they’re like, “You’re going to want to buy land? This is worthless. The Babylonians are about to take the land.”

Michael: Right, they’ve got the siege wall around Jerusalem.

Nehemia: Right, it’s like buying swampland in Florida, right? What would you want this for? And his point is that this prophesy will be fulfilled…

Michael: Yeah, amen.

Nehemia: … and now we look back and the prophesy has been fulfilled! Now, the nations of the world don’t want this. They’re murmuring and they’re speaking against Yehovah and against His Messiah like it talks about in Psalm 2. I mean, the UNESCO has made this proclamation that “the Jews have no historical connection to Jerusalem.” UNESCO… Jeremiah wrote this! Whether you believe in God or not, there’s no disputing Jeremiah wrote this around 586 BC - we know the date from archaeology - so, he wrote this in 586 BC, and he’s talking there about how God will do this with all His heart and soul, plant the Israelites back in their land. And UNESCO says that there’s no connection between the Jews and the land! What are they talking about? I mean, it’s insanity.

I feel like sometimes I’m in that movie Planet of the Apes. It’s a madhouse in here, a madhouse! I mean, you’re dealing with the United Nations, they’re delusional. I mean, the prophesy is right here.

Michael: And we need to pass a resolution against ignorance and stupidity, but they’d have to jail them all. [laughing]

Nehemia: There would be no members. [laughing] Right, right.

Michael: Okay.

Nehemia: Okay.

Michael: That’s it.

Nehemia: So, Zephaniah 3:9, this is one of the key prophesies in the Bible about the restoration of all things that he talks about in Acts 3:21, “For then I will turn,” “Ki az ehefokh el ha’amim, safa brurah, for then I will turn to the people’s pure language, likro kulam beshem Yehovah l’avdo sh’khem echad, to call all of them upon the name of Yehovah to serve Him…” Literally he says, “one shoulder”. And the image there is everyone is standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a line, serving Yehovah together.

Now, what is the image here in Zephaniah 3:9? When I read this, it’s immediately clear to me that Zephaniah 3:9 is an undoing of the curse of the Tower of Babel. What happened at the Tower of Babel…

Michael: Oh.

Nehemia: … in Genesis is, all the nations came together and they had one language, and that language was Hebrew. And what did they use that Hebrew for? They said, “Let’s build for ourselves a name, and we’ll rebel against God.” And God then scattered them throughout the world and gave them different languages so they couldn’t do that. And He’s saying, “That curse will be undone and in the end of times we’ll all come together once again with a single language, with a pure language, that original Hebrew that was the language of creation. All mankind will speak that language once again, not to build for themselves a name, but to call upon the name of Yehovah to serve Him and not themselves, not to build their tower but to build up the name of Yehovah with one shoulder.”

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: And we’re in the beginning of that process, Michael. This can’t happen until first the Jews restore their own language. You know, there was this big debate in the 1800’s in the Jewish world in Europe. There were four daily newspapers in Hebrew. People couldn’t speak Hebrew, but they could read and write in Hebrew.

And people said, “Wait a minute. This isn’t our language. That’s some language of some ancient prophets who are now dead. We should make Yiddish the national language of the Jewish people.” And the Jewish people, as a whole, rejected that. They said, “Yiddish was the language of the exile, the language of the Diaspora, the language of our slavery. We must restore the pure language of the prophets.” And I believe that’s part of what’s going on here, this is part of the prophesy of Zephaniah 3:9. We’re witnessing it happening in front of our eyes, almost in slow motion.

One more prophesy, Michael. Zechariah 14 verse 9. I love this one.

Michael: And this is part of all the prophets have spoken from the beginning.

Nehemia: Right.

Michael: This is the restoration.

Nehemia: This is what Acts 3:21 is about.

Michael: Right. They know this.

Nehemia: Right.

Michael: They know this.

Nehemia: Absolutely. Now, I’ll tell you one of the reasons I love this verse, Michael. It’s actually the closing verse of the daily prayers in traditional Rabbinical Judaism. Now, I was raised as an Orthodox Jew, but at a certain point in my upbringing I’m like, “All these prayers…” I mean, we would have prayers three times a day, every day. And it was prayers by rote, and I would often come at the end because I was ditching. I just couldn’t do it, standing there for 45 minutes, the same prayers, day after day by rote. But I would come to this and it would be sung, it’s part of the Adon Olam. “Vehaya Yehovah lemelech al kol ha’aretz, and it shall come to pass that Yehovah will be King over the entire earth! Bayom hahu ihiyeh Yehovah echad, and on that day Yehovah will be echad, He’ll be One, u’shemo Echad, and His name will be One.”

And the rabbis in the Talmud talk about this - I only discovered this later - that in the Talmud they say, “What does this verse mean, His name will be One?” And I talk about this in my book, Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. What does it mean, “His name will be One?” They say, today in the exile, instead of saying “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey” we say “Adonai”. And in the end times we’ll all call upon the name, the entire earth, all mankind, His name will be One. We won’t read the letters “Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey” and speak them as “Adonai”, we’ll speak them the way they’re written, with those vowels, “Yehovah”. And in my teaching I did - and this is in The Gentiles Shall Know My Name teaching - I bring this source, Rabbi Jacob Bachrach from the year 1890, who brings this verse and brings the Talmudic passage.

And he says, “When it says that we’ll read it the way it’s written, it means with the vowels,” which proves back then they knew what the vowels were.

Michael: Knew.

Nehemia: And these are still the true vowels, “Yehovah”. So, what I see happening is that this explosion of information is part of the fulfilment of this prophesy to restore the name, restore the language, restore the people and just restore the truth. It’s part of the restoration of all things. I mean, look, Michael, we’re living in this incredible period, 1,034 Hebrew Bible manuscripts with the name Yehovah. We’ve got all these documents that nobody has studied. The Hebrew scholar in Israel literally told me that they don’t care. They’re not interested. That’s just Christian stuff.

So who knows what treasures are still to be found in the Hebrew Epistle of James, the Hebrew Epistle of Jude, that’s in the British Library.

Michael: Yeah, this is one of the things that we’re doing on the break…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: …going through Jude, the Hebrew Jude. And this is an epistle that really, he’s telling the people to earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. You know, this is part of the restoration, because at the end of the 1st century it was already being lost. Paul, Shaul, had admitted it. All those in Asia had turned away from it. He spent two years and three months at one school, the school of Tyrannus in teaching them, and yet they had turned away from him at that time. He mentions by name the people that have turned away and gone to the dark side, and there in Jude he said that we must earnestly, earnestly contend to restore the faith that was once delivered to the saints, that faith that Yeshua and His disciples, what they were teaching, what they were promulgating was being lost at that time.

And so, if we think in the Christian world, in the Christian Church, that we have the faith once delivered to the saints, that was lost centuries ago, millennia ago. But yet, Yeshua said, “I will declare Your name. I will make it known and I have made it known.” And He said He would send the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, and that’s why we need the Spirit to lead us into all truth.

As Nehemia’s talking, in Jeremiah, in this prophesy in Jeremiah that he would send fishers and they would fish them out of their exiles, and then he would send hunters and they would hunt them out of the exile. And this is what he was talking about. In the 1800s, there were Jews that were coming back to Israel. They were waking up and coming back to Israel. But most of the Jews in Germany were saying, “We’re more German than we are Jewish,” and they were living like kings in Europe.

Nehemia: Michael, I’m actually going to be giving a lecture at this university, they invited me to come speak about the Holocaust. And I said, “What I really want to share, what’s in my heart, is something I call the ‘lost scrolls of Auschwitz.’” And I had no idea about this until a few years ago. It turns out that some of the Jewish slaves whose job it was to pull the bodies out of the gas chamber and burn them, they wrote their accounts of what happened, and these were discovered by the Poles afterwards in these piles of ashes, and we can read these now, today.

And one of the things they share is how these Jews are about to be put into the gas chambers, and there’s this old rebbetzen, the wife of a rabbi, and she starts, she gets really angry. She said, “Our rabbis have been telling the people, ‘don’t leave,’ that Hungary is our home. We shouldn’t go back to the land of Israel. And now, look what’s happened.” And I pray to Yehovah every day that we don’t have another Holocaust, but there’s a reason that the Jews have a country and a place to flee to. There are Jews today in my neighborhood who come from France. I hear French all over my neighborhood in Jerusalem today.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: And they’re there as refugees, because if a Jew walks down the streets in France with a kippa and tzitzit who looks like a Jew, he’ll be attacked. You know, there was this liberal, leftist journalist who doubted this, in Malmö, Sweden, and went there, and the person was attacked. And he said, “Okay, the Jews are telling the truth. You can’t live in Europe anymore as a Jew without being attacked,” in these certain areas that have been taken over by other populations.

Michael: Well, the fishers fished them out, Herzl. They fished them out…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Michael: …and then the hunters hunted them out from behind every rock and in every cave. And ladies and gentlemen, part of what happens is Israel comes back into the land, the Gentiles then start coming to Israel from the ends of the earth and crying out in repentance, and the Almighty, because they repent, the Almighty makes His name known. And what is His name? In over 1,000 Hebrew manuscripts…

Nehemia: His name is Yehovah.

Michael: And so, this is the time that the restoration of all things is beginning. And to those believers, that means that Yeshua has to remain in heaven until the restoration of all things, and then the Messiah comes.

Nehemia: Michael, I want to read one last prophesy if we have time, Isaiah 66 verse 20. It’s talking about the nations. It says, “And they will bring all your brothers from the nations as an offering to Yehovah.” The nations are involved…

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: … in restoring the Jews and the Israelites to the land of Israel. And when I hear about these organizations that are actually doing this, fulfilling prophesy, I say, “We truly are in this period of things being restored. And I hope soon that we get… I pray soon…” Can I end in prayer?

Michael: Please do.

Nehemia: Yehovah, Avinu shebashamayim, send us your Son! Father, send us the Mashiach, Yehovah. Whoever you have planned, who is Your Son, Yehovah, let us know Him soon. Let Him be here on earth soon to restore all things, to bring that final restoration to the world. In Your Holy name, Yehovah, Amen.

Michael: Amen.

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

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

I'm excited to finally be able to share with you an English translation of the Hebrew manuscript of the Gospels that I discovered in the early 2000's. All those years ago, I was at the National Library of Israel looking through a microfilm of miscellaneous manuscripts photographed at the Vatican Library when I came across three pages of the Gospel of Luke (1:1-35) and one page of the Gospel of John (1:1-13) in Hebrew. The microfilm was part of a what I call a "junk box" containing several hundred loose pages from numerous manuscripts written by different scribes in different periods. At the time, the catalogue of the National Library of Israel did not list the full contents of the Vatican junk box and made no reference to these Hebrew Gospels. The Vatican Library recently published color photographs of these documents on it's website, opening the door for me to share this with the world.

To help you study these fascinating manuscripts, I created a PDF with the full Hebrew transcription and English translation with links to the color photos on the Vatican website, which you can download.

SUPPORT NEHEMIA'S RESEARCH AND TEACHINGS!

Makor Hebrew Foundation is a 501c3 tax-deductible not for profit organization.

Share this Teaching on Social Media

The post Hebrew Voices #72 – Hebrew Luke and John Found in Vatican Junk Box appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.