Watch the Sneak Peek of this Support Team Study, Mysteries of India’s Hebrew New Testament: Part 2! Nehemia and scholar Mascha Van Dort continue to uncover the identities of the translators of the Cochin New Testament. This new information sheds light on the language within the text and paves the way for more research.

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The post SNEAK PEEK! STS – Mysteries of India’s Hebrew New Testament: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #212, Mysteries of India’s Hebrew New Testament: Part 1, Nehemia is joined by scholar Mascha Van Dort to discuss her research on a historical mystery man who was born Jewish and later converted to Christianity, ultimately arriving in India in the 18th century and having a hand in translating the New Testament into Hebrew.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #212 – Mysteries of India’s Hebrew New Testament: Part 1

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

Mascha: Matthew 23.

Nehemia: What?

Mascha: Yeah, that’s the first name, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 23?

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Alright, I need to see that book.

So, you study behavioral science and why people do things.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Do you think he did it for the money, or because he found the classes so convincing that Christianity was true?

Mascha: Christianity and Judaism… he thought it was two neighbors. And they were friendly conversations, and it’s probably how he was brought up in a family, with having one Christian child that had been brought up Jewish in a Jewish family.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Mascha van Dort. She has a Master’s of Applied Physics from the Technical University of Delft. She’s worked as a researcher for the last 25 years in behavioral sciences, and Prof. Meir Bar Ilan of Bar Ilan University recommended her research on the authorship of the Cochin Hebrew Gospels. He recommended that to me when I interviewed him. And she has a really important article that’s come out. And you could agree with it or disagree with it, but it’s in one of the top journals in the world on Jewish studies… and I’m sure I’m mispronouncing it; the Revue des Études Juives. It’s interesting; in Jewish sources they refer to this, in Hebrew, as the French Journal. And then the Jewish Quarterly Review, they refer to it as the English Journal. In the 19th century, there were two major journals in Jewish study… and then there was the German journal, ZWJ (Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums).

So, this is a major thing that goes back, this journal, over 150 years. And for her to have an article in that journal is really an historic thing. So, this is something, guys, you have to pay attention to even if you disagree with it. I’m showing it here on the screen. Her article is called Commissioner, Purpose, Translators, Copyists and Age of the Hebrew New Testament of Cochin, that’s in India, and The Quran of the Library of Congress. And I heard about this, and I’m like, “Okay, this is absolutely fascinating. We have to have this on the program. This is a Hebrew Voices story.”

So, we have this full, complete New Testament, in Hebrew, that was brought to Cambridge University by this Buchanan fellow. I’ve been to Cambridge. I’ve held this in my hands. And now we have a woman who’s discovered, according to her article in REJ, Revue des Études Juives, explaining where it comes from.

Before we get into it, you’re in applied physics and behavioral sciences. How did you get into studying a Hebrew New Testament from India?

Mascha: Well, yeah, okay. So, my name is Mascha van Dort, and I have the same last name as one of the translators of the Hebrew New Testament. And actually, what motivates me in my research is that I am really curious about what motivates people. And I do that for innovations, and there’s the relation to applied physics, what I’m doing today. But I’m also really curious about what drives people through time, and also through cultures. So, it was sort of a personal interest that I followed, but it’s just in line with what I do.

Nehemia: So, is he your ancestor, this van Dort who translated the Gospels of the New Testament?

Mascha: No, he’s not.

Nehemia: He’s not? Okay. Is it a coincidence?

Mascha: No, it’s not a coincidence. We share the same last name. So, what happened in the Netherlands, a lot of people have a surname starting with van, which means from, and then you have a city name. So, you could be named van Delft, and then you came from Delft, the city. And I’m from Dort, which refers to the city of Dordrecht.

Nehemia: So, like the painter, we say in English, van Gogh, but I think you say van Gogh. So, he was from a town called Gogh?

Mascha: Yeah, probably. Although Gogh is a city in Germany and not in Holland. But yeah, probably.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: So, his ancestors probably came from there.

Nehemia: So, as a behavioral scientist, why did he cut off his ear? You don’t have to answer that, it’s fine.

Mascha: Yeah, well, that’s a long story.

Nehemia: Let’s save that for a different discussion. Alright. So, van Dort… Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort, according to your hypothesis here, translated the New Testament, or parts of it, into Hebrew, and he happens to have the same name as you. But you had told me that somebody contacted you to find out if he was your relative. Is that what got you interested?

Mascha: Well, no. Actually, my father… he retired. And a lot of retired, retirees, or however you call it, they do ancestry research.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Mascha: And so basically, in the Netherlands, there are four to five families that have the surname van Dort, and I’m from one of them. And so, what I did is, I was in innovation management, technical. I made a nice, beautiful website for him, before 2000, let’s say. And what happened is that I got a phone call around 2000, actually, from Prof. Bar Ilan, and he asked me, do I know more about Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort? And back in that time, I didn’t know. But I searched in Bing and well, something came up.

So yeah, a couple of years ago there was a book coming out about him, and it sparked my interest again. And it was actually just before COVID. And I started going into it, and I contacted Prof. Meir Bar Ilan again, and also another professor from Copenhagen, that is… and so it got rolling again. I found 300 pages of information, and really a lot of new sources.

Nehemia: You also have a book coming out.

Mascha: Yeah, I have.

Nehemia: Alright, wonderful. So, we’re going to put up a link to that when it comes out, but right now we will have a link to the article.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. And you told me that they’re going to make the article open access at some point, but right now it looks like you have to pay for it. But hopefully soon it’ll be open access and everyone can read it.

All right, so tell us about this. So, you looked into this Leopold… he has a long name. Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort. I’ll just call him Leopold, Leopold van Dort. And you found out he wasn’t your relative, but he has an interesting story. So, who is he? And how did he come to translate the New Testament, or parts of the New Testament, into Hebrew?

Mascha: Yeah. He was the grandson of the first Jewish person who came to Dordrecht. That’s a city in Holland, and his grandfather came from Poland. And there were just about six records of van Dort when I started out. We knew that he was Jewish, but that he had converted. So, it was really a puzzle to find out how he linked…

Nehemia: He converted to Christianity you mean?

Mascha: Yes, he did.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: And it was really a puzzle to find out where he came from and where he was born, but he was actually born in 1712 in The Hague. And he was a son of a melamed, and…

Nehemia: What?

Mascha: A melamed.

Nehemia: Oh, a melamed, okay. A teacher.

Mascha: Very good, yeah. Yeah, and so he trained as a chazzan, and first he worked in Dordrecht. So, in his ancestral city, The Hague, which was actually kind of a big place back then… It was the city of our court. So, the Prince of Orange, and also the court, because we had a sort of… I wouldn’t say it was a democracy, but it was more than a prince reigning court… We had like a republic, actually, at that time.

Nehemia: Hmm.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: By the way, it’s interesting, you said his grandfather came from Poland. And obviously van Dort is not a Polish name.

Mascha: No.

Nehemia: But Jews in Poland didn’t have names at the time… they didn’t have surnames. They didn’t take the family names until they were forced to by the Russian Empire. The reason they gave them surnames… like my name, Gordon, that was something only that came about like in maybe the 1800’s. And that was because they wanted to tax them. And if I said, “I’m Nehemia Ben Reuven…” “Well, there’s 12 of those. How do we know which one you are? So, to tax you, we need to give you a family name.”

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s interesting. He’s called van Dort, but in Poland, he didn’t have a surname.

Mascha: He was Solomon Levi.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So, Levi means he’s a Levite, so… that’s not really a surname, but it became one later.

Mascha: Levi is for a son of Judah, really.

Nehemia: Levi means he’s from the tribe of Levi.

Mascha: I wouldn’t say that. He’s a son of Judah.

Nehemia: No, Judah was maybe his father’s name.

Mascha: I wouldn’t be sure. Anyway, Leopold’s name was Joe Kepp Moses van Dort, and he was a son of Moses van Dort and Martha Cohen, so he was a son of a Cohen.

Nehemia: Well, Martha is who? Leopold’s mother?

Mascha: Yeah, it was his mother.

Nehemia: Okay, so his mother’s father was a Cohen, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. Let’s move on.

Mascha: Yeah, right. Okay, where were we?

Nehemia: So, Leopold converted to Christianity. How did that happen? His father was a teacher. How does he end up converting to Christianity?

Mascha: Well, he worked for six years as a chazzan in Dordrecht.

Nehemia: Oh, so chazzan is a cantor. So, he’s the cantor in the synagogue.

Mascha: Yeah, he was a cantor and probably was conducting most of the services, because the rabbi was a prestigious rabbi, he was already kind of old. By the way, he was also related to the rabbi. So, there were two important families in Dordrecht, and he was one of them and the rabbi was the other.

What happened in 1741… it was a really cold year. I mean, a really cold year. So, the average temperature in Celsius was below 12 degrees over the whole year, which is very cold for the Netherlands.

Nehemia: This is 1741, you’re saying?

Mascha: What? Yeah.

Nehemia: 1741?

Mascha: Yeah. And he was a chazzan, and he was probably also making a living by teaching.

Nehemia: You said it was minus 21?

Mascha: No, it was not minus 21.

Nehemia: What was the temperature? I didn’t hear… in Celcius.

Mascha: The average was below 12 degrees.

Nehemia: Oh, 12. Below 12 Celsius.

Mascha: Yeah, Celsius.

Nehemia: Oh, but not minus. Oh, so that’s not cold. It was…

Mascha: It was really… it was a disastrous year, and it was…

Nehemia: It was minus 12 or 12? Sorry.

Mascha: Yeah, the temperature didn’t come above 12 in the summer, and normally we have temperatures until 28. So yeah.

Nehemia: Oh, I see. And so, 12 Celsius is 53.6 Fahrenheit, and you’re saying normally it gets up to 82. Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: I’m from Chicago originally, so that doesn’t seem so horrible to me. But all right, anyway, go ahead.

Mascha: It was horrible. Well, for the Netherlands, it is kind of horrible.

Nehemia: It’s bad for the crops and all those tulips and all that, probably.

Mascha: Yeah. Well, I’m not sure about the tulips in that time, but it definitely was not good for the crops, and also a lot of floods were happening.

Nehemia: Ahhh!

Mascha: And because he probably depended on private teaching as well for his income, he was forced to leave. And then he taught for another four years in the east, more in Germany and east of the Netherlands. And he was married in 1734, and she probably went with him.

But in 1745… he had a younger brother, and that was a foster brother. And the interesting thing about this brother is that this foster brother was born as a Christian son. He was an illegitimate son of a noble family, and he grew up with him. And his younger brother, he was called Beer, or Benjamin, he turned 25, which is the age of adulthood, and he was entitled to an income by his illegitimate father.

Nehemia: So, his brother had a Christian father. Okay, got you.

Mascha: Yeah, and a Christian mother, both. Yeah.

Nehemia: Oh, and a Christian mother… Wait, so how is it his brother? I’m confused.

Mascha: It was a foster brother.

Nehemia: Oh, okay, alright, got you. So, Beer is his adopted brother, or foster brother, that grows up with Leopold.

Mascha: Yeah. And I know it sounds like an incredible fairytale story, but it’s actually the truth.

Nehemia: The world’s complicated, right?

Mascha: Yeah. Actually, it took me about four years to believe it myself, but yeah. So, he was a son of two nobles, of a count and a duchess, actually. And because of the difference in noble rank, they couldn’t marry.

Nehemia: Oh! So, they gave their son to be raised by a Jewish family?

Mascha: Yeah, they did.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. Alright.

Mascha: In the Hague. The sister of the count was living in the Hague. The baby went with his sister.

Nehemia: So, how does this lead Leopold to convert to Christianity, I suppose is now the question.

Mascha: Well, Beer was entitled to a yearly income. And to claim this income, and probably Leopold was the oldest of the younger siblings, he went with him. To be entitled, his father probably said, “You have to reconvert to Christianity.” So, they took classes in Aix-la-Chapelle, in Aachen, that’s on the border of the Netherlands and Germany. Beer returned to Christianity, and Leopold converted with him to Christianity.

Nehemia: Oh.

Mascha: Yes.

Nehemia: So, you study behavioral science and why people do things.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Do you think he did it for the money? Or because he found the classes so convincing that Christianity was true.

Mascha: Well, he wrote about it, about converting.

Nehemia: Oh, so we know why, alright.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: If we believe him. Go ahead, yeah.

Mascha: Yeah, well, those are conversion stories, and back then they always had a drama and a happy ending, much like these conversion stories, the ones, well, actually the movies we have now. So, there are a couple, and of course, it’s not always that there’s a happy ending after conversion. But, well, I think there were two drivers. First of all, after 1740, those four years, those were hard years for everyone. And he probably did a lot of private teaching, and private teaching depended on the salaries of the parents. There was a note going out from Amsterdam, from the rabbis, “Please parents, pay your teachers,” because teachers were notoriously underpaid. So, I think that’s one of the drivers.

And, well, I think it was also kind of a family duty to help the youngest son. So, I think those are the two main drivers. And what you see in his later writings is that he really stuck to Christianity. He also was married to a Christian, and he had a daughter, so reconverting would have made his daughter illegitimate, which he did not want.

Nehemia: We’re talking about… Leopold had a daughter?

Mascha: Yeah. He later had a Christian daughter.

Nehemia: So, he had a Christian daughter? Wait, how did… I don’t understand. His wife was Christian?

Mascha: You marry again, and then you marry a Christian, and then you have a…

Nehemia: Oh, so that’s his second wife. Okay.

Mascha: He had a second wife. My suspicion is… I couldn’t find it… that his first wife died.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So, he wrote a book. What’s his book called?

Mascha: He actually wrote three books.

Nehemia: Three books? Okay.

Mascha: The first book is called… well, it’s An Explanation of Matthew 23, I think.

Nehemia: What?

Mascha: Yeah, that’s the first name, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 23?

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Alright. I need to see that book.

Mascha: It was of course in German. And he had to write that, because that was an obligatory thing to do for your conversion. You needed to write something.

Nehemia: Really? He had to write an essay in order to convert to Christianity.

Mascha: Yes, there was a whole cycle if you wanted to convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

Nehemia: So, he was Catholic. Okay.

Mascha: Yeah. The Protestant Church was a bit more loose in which you have to…

Nehemia: So, correct me if I’m wrong. I thought the Netherlands… it’s not a Protestant country? Are there also Catholics?

Mascha: Yeah, the Netherlands is Protestant, and Germany is half Protestant, half Catholic.

Nehemia: Oh, so this was in Germany that this duke or whatever was. Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, and also, it’s good context to know that half of Germany was Protestant, because people converted from Catholicism to Protestantism quite sometimes and different, so it was not something unusual, really. From Judaism to Christianity is of course something else, but it was not intriguing.

His second book, and this is really nice to know because that was his most important book, is called The Book of Dawn. And it was a reaction to another… well, it’s a quite well-known mission book to Jews and it was called Light in the Evening, so Light of Dusk. And he wrote a book called A Book of Dawn, and it describes a friendly conversation between two neighbors, one a rabbi and one a converted person. And that’s really what he thought about the two religions. So, about Christianity and Judaism, he thought it was two neighbors and there were friendly conversations. And it’s probably how he was brought up, in a family with one Christian child who was brought up Jewish in a Jewish family.

Nehemia: How interesting. So, my understanding is that he wasn’t hostile towards Judaism or Christianity. Would you say that’s…

Mascha: No.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s really interesting.

Mascha: He was brought up with both, I guess. And for him it wasn’t too far, and it wasn’t unnatural. I mean, if you’re brought up with it from a young… it’s… yeah. I think it’s more fluid.

Nehemia: It’s interesting. So, even today in the 21st century, most Christians know almost nothing about Judaism. And most Jews, frankly, know almost nothing about Christianity. I had some friends in Israel who were Christians, and they were very devout. I would say like evangelical Christians. And they rented an apartment in Israel, and they were speaking to the landlord, and they said, “Do you know what we believe in?” And they’re like, “Yeah, Katolim. You’re Catholics.” And they’re like, “No.” But in their mind, Catholics aren’t even Christians, because from where they come from, they’re American Evangelicals.

So, the average Jew knows almost nothing about Christianity, and the average Christian knows relatively little about Judaism. Even in our age today, it blows my mind. You’ll see these anti-Semitic rants online, where they’re saying, “The Talmud says X, Y, Z.” But most Jews have never read the Talmud, and the Talmud says all kinds of things. There are discussions and debates in it, so that’s somebody’s opinion you’re quoting. And most Jews have never heard that opinion, and if they heard it, they’d be horrified too! So, that’s very interesting. So, he had exposure to both because he had a Christian brother. That’s really interesting.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. A Christian brother who’s being forced to reconvert back to his religion…

Mascha: He wasn’t forced. He wanted to.

Nehemia: Well, if he wanted the money, he had to do it. So, in a sense…

Mascha: Yeah. So, they both went on an endeavor. They wanted to establish a newspaper printing press. Newspapers in that time were very innovative, and so they had the example of the newspaper, the Gazette de Cologne from Cologne. This newspaper, this was a German newspaper, and it was actually read in The Hague; it had a really important political influence. They set up this endeavor to establish a newspaper, and they didn’t know where yet, because they wanted to establish it in the German town. They knew that there was a peace congress coming up in some German town in the area, and that was their endeavor. They got a privilege so that they could print anything, and they were exempt from censorship…

Nehemia: Wow!

Mascha: …from the emperor. And they got this privilege also through the father of Benjamin, or Beer. So, from his brother…

Nehemia: Okay, well that’s nice to be exempt from censorship.

Mascha: Yeah. It was really essential back then, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Alright. So, they set up a newspaper… and what town is this in?

Mascha: Well, basically 1746 in fall, because in 1747 this peace congress was coming up in Aix-la-Chapelle. So, the king of France, the king of England, the prince of Holland, but also Prussia, and the emperor of Austria, a Habsburg… actually the German Empire, they all sent their ambassadors to Aix-la-Chapelle…

Nehemia: “Isle of Chapelle” in English. Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, Aix-la-Chapelle. What do you call it in English?

Nehemia: I think we say Isle of Chapelle.

Mascha: Oh, Isle of Chapelle. That’s interesting, because it’s actually a French translation of Aachen… well, never mind.

Nehemia: Oh, is that Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle? Oh, okay, it’s the same city, alright.

Mascha: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: Alright.

Mascha: Yeah. So, that was their endeavor, and that’s what they were going to do.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: So, his first book he printed on his own printing press in the city center. Well, the newspaper was never a success, so in 1749, they sold the business.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Mascha: And Leopold, well, he was already married. He had a daughter, a Christian daughter, by then, so he started tutoring noble sons…

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: … teaching Hebrew. And he tutored Protestant children, because the Catholic children, they went to the Jesuit gymnasia, and Protestant children, they were schooled at home. And he had quite a good career going on, so he went from teaching lower noble sons to really the upper noble sons, and he did it for quite some years. What he really aspired, Leopold, was to… he would like to get a position at a university, so he did job interviews with several universities. We know that… Leipzig and Jena, but also in Göttingen.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: And, well, his resume says that he taught at some universities, but he for sure did not teach at Leipzig. He studied there; he studied philosophy. And actually, his education was in line with the Jesuit priests, so he really took the curriculum from the Jesuit priests. In some records, he also mentions the Jesuit priests. So, he was really inspired by Jesuit priests, who were the great teachers of that day. So, he really wanted to be a teacher.

Nehemia: Okay. So, he’s a Catholic and he’s inspired by Jesuits. I know some of my audience will say, “Oh, he’s not a Christian, he’s a Catholic,” but whatever, that’s…

Mascha: Oh, well, sure. You’re Christian if you’re Catholic. But never mind.

Nehemia: That’s an American concept; ignore it. Alright.

Mascha: Okay, alright.

Nehemia: So, he’s trying to get this university position. I don’t see how he gets into India though… well, I guess the Dutch East India Company has something to do with it.

Mascha: So, anyway, for his application to the University of Leipzig, he already converted to Protestantism.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Mascha: Yeah, I think it wasn’t too far, anyway, and it is in line with teaching Protestant children. He was actually teaching in the northern half of Germany, so that is Protestant.

Nehemia: So, he converts from Judaism to Catholicism, hangs out with the Jesuits, and now he’s a Protestant. Okay.

Mascha: He didn’t hang out with the Jesuits, by the way. He’s inspired by them.

Nehemia: Well, he is inspired by the Jesuits, okay.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: At least educationally. Which denomination, do we know, of Protestantism?

Mascha: Which denomination?

Nehemia: Was it Lutheran? Or…

Mascha: Yeah. He probably converted in Leipzig to Lutheranism, but there are no records there. I checked, but they didn’t record it, unfortunately.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, so, what I said was, he was teaching higher noble sons, and he actually taught the sons of, I think even a prince of Brunswick, and there he met… I need to check that, I’m sorry.

Nehemia: Well, people can read the article. He met some counts; we can move past that. Guys, go read the article. We’re just giving you a tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more information. This woman worked for… it sounds like decades to produce this information.

Mascha: Yeah. So, he met Count van Imhoff, who was working for the Dutch East India Company…

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: …and he was related to the prince of Brunswick. And he worked in Colombo, actually, in Ceylon.

Nehemia: Which today is Sri Lanka. The capital of Sri Lanka, I think.

Mascha: Yeah. They had multiple provinces, and he oversaw one of the provinces in Ceylon. And he knew that there was something called the Seminary of Colombo, and that they had a position open for a Hebrew professor at the seminary…

Nehemia: Okay, so he can’t get a job in Europe, so he goes to Sri Lanka.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: And help me out here; at the time, the Dutch East India Company ruled Ceylon?

Mascha: Yes, the Dutch ruled Ceylon. Except for an interior bit, yes.

Nehemia: Okay. This is before the British got there, I guess.

Mascha: Yes, of course, before the British got there, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, I’m not sure about Ceylon, but most of the Dutch colonies, except for Indonesia, were taken over by the English around 1795.

Nehemia: Well, I think Goa, wasn’t that… oh, no, wasn’t Goa Portuguese?

Mascha: No, Goa was not. Goa remained Portuguese, but the large part of the south…

Nehemia: So, Goa remained Portuguese until the 1960’s, when India invaded it. That’s crazy. Alright.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, we’re in the 1740’s at this point, and he’s going to Ceylon.

Mascha: Yeah, I think it was 1754. So, he got appointed by the Dutch East India Company, and he went to Ceylon, Colombo.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: And what the seminary did… it was not for a mission, just let me get that straight. They were part of how the Dutch governed Ceylon. They governed it through schools. And what the seminary did is it trained the local Tamils, also local Dutch Burghers and others, the Chetties. There were quite a few nationalities, or backgrounds, let me say, in Ceylon. They trained them to be schoolmasters, to be governors. And also, they prepared them to study theology in the Netherlands to become reverends.

So, the ones that were sent out to the Netherlands, and the Dutch East India paid for their study, those were children of all backgrounds. You didn’t have to be a Dutch Burgher to be sent out to the Netherlands. Actually, Tamil children were also sent to the Netherlands for study as reverends.

Nehemia: Really?

Mascha: Yes. The only catch was that they didn’t have enough money to support two students in Holland.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: So, to support the study of theology, they needed a Hebrew professor to train them in Hebrew.

Nehemia: Wow, that’s impressive that they’re studying Hebrew in Ceylon, in Sri Lanka, in the 1750’s. That blows my mind. Wow! Alright.

Mascha: And this will blow your mind a bit more; before the school reform that they did, they did it in Latin as well. So, imagine…

Nehemia: That I kind of expect because they’re Europeans, but that they’re studying Hebrew… But I guess it’s part of theology for them. Okay, it makes sense.

Mascha: Yeah, the Dutch did a school reform in 1758, and then the local language to study was Dutch. So, no more Latin. We got rid of the Latin.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: Anyway, that is not relevant here. What is relevant is that in the first year, he didn’t have a lot of pupils for Hebrew study, and his rector actually knows… So, the Dutch also had trade ports in southern India on the west coast, so that’s present-day Kerala. Back then it was called the Malabar. And they oversaw, or they had most of the pepper trade, and that was a highly profitable business. So, all the pepper trade through the Netherlands, through Europe, went through the Dutch East India Company.

The seminary had been to India for quite some time to fill in the position of the rector there and he knew that there was also a large Jewish population on the west coast of Kerala, especially in Cochin. The Dutch worked in Cochin with a long-standing relation. A lot of the trade went through the Jews. Through one Jew particularly, and that was Ezekiel Rahabi.

Nehemia: So, we’ve heard about him. Guys, go listen to the episode I did with Meir Bar Ilan, or two episodes, and we talked about this Rahabi gentleman. Alright, so he’s a Jewish merchant who is in Cochin. And there’s actually a number of Jewish communities, or there were a number of Jewish communities in India. There were Jews who came from Baghdad a few hundred years earlier. And remember, this is the 1700’s, so it’s already a couple hundred years earlier. There are Jews that, according to what we say at least, they’ve been there for 2,000 years. There’s also Jews who came from Yemen. That’s what I talked about with Meir Bar Ilan, that there are definitely connections with Yemen.

I held in my hand remnants of a Torah scroll from… it says the Malabar coast, right? But it’s Kerala, and it was brought by Reverend Buchanan. And it says on it there, it says, “Brought from the synagogue of the Black Jews.”

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: And what they mean by the Black Jews is that they’re Jews who are probably Yemenite, who have mixed with local Indian… maybe wives or something, and so they’re kind of darker skinned. And that was a Yemenite Torah scroll. I mean, it was written apparently in India, but if you showed me, or any expert, a Torah scroll from India, and that Torah scroll from India, and one from Yemen, you couldn’t tell them apart. So, there’s definitely trade connections. And it makes sense if you’re trading in the Indian Ocean, you need to have representatives in all these major ports, from Hudaydah in Yemen all the way to Kerala.

Mascha: Yeah.

Nehemia: And then even all the way to Kaifeng in China. It’s part of this international Jewish trade network, so to speak.

Mascha: Yeah, so what happened is, first of all, they didn’t have a fixed rabbi, at least the synagogue of Ezekiel Rahabi. They had visiting rabbis from Yemen. So, that was their first place, and most of the women they married also came from Yemen. There had been people coming and going, merchants coming and going from Cochin for all these centuries. Those ports, the people who stayed there, that was not a fixed population, Jewish population. There were people coming and going, merchants…

Nehemia: Oh, and I should mention here Maimonides. I did an episode on the Cairo Genizah, and Maimonides’ brother left from Egypt going to India and he died on a ship. And Maimonides tells the story of that was the saddest thing that ever happened. And remember, Maimonides was a refugee from Muslim fanatics in Spain who tried to force him to convert to Islam. And he ended up going through Morocco, eventually to Egypt. And the saddest thing in his life is that his brother died on the ship to India. And there’s this letter that his brother sent him that, he says he used to hold it and cry over it. It’s a really dramatic story.

So yeah, so you have Jews going back and forth from India, certainly since the 12th century, but probably for 2,000 years.

Mascha: From the 10th century onwards, and that is, well, that’s mostly…

Nehemia: Well, Meir Bar Ilan has done research and shown that. It talks about Solomon sent ships from Eilat to Ophir, and he says that’s a place in India, which… we knew was somewhere in the subcontinent. He says specifically in western India.

Mascha: Yeah. So, the first records which are really found in India are from the 10th century, the first written records.

Nehemia: Are those the copper plates?

Mascha: They’re actually from the 11th century.

Nehemia: Oh, the 11th century, okay. The copper plates, guys, is such an interesting story. We won’t go into that, but… alright. So, he doesn’t have a lot of work in Colombo, in Sri Lanka, and they end up sending him to Kerala, somewhere around there.

Mascha: Well, he says he’s going on a holiday to…

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: But to be sure, his rector had hosted Ezekiel Rahabi at the seminary, because they had a printing press at the seminary and Ezekiel Rahabi was looking for ways to print the liturgy. What do you call it?

Nehemia: The Siddur prayer book. The Jewish prayer book.

Mascha: Yes, the Siddur.

Nehemia: And let me give a quick background for my audience who may not know. Jews all over the world, traditionally, had a very set liturgy. Meaning, you go to a synagogue… And look, in Christianity they have what’s called high church and low church. There is no such thing as low church in Judaism. Every synagogue, whether it’s Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Karaite, all of them have a very set liturgy. And so, if everybody is reciting the same prayers every Sabbath, well, it’s really nice to have a book printed, because if you have to write it out by hand it’s quite painstaking and expensive. And then each community has slight variations, sometimes major, but usually slight variations of what the liturgy is, and so you’re saying he’s looking for a place to print the Indian-Yemenite slash probably tradition. In Yemen, they never had printing presses, even in the 20th century in the Jewish community.

Alright, so he’s looking for a printing press. How interesting. Did he get it printed in the end?

Mascha: Yes, he did. I already told you that Leopold Immanuel Jacob was a previous owner of a printing press.

Nehemia: Oh, that’s right! He had experience with printing!

Mascha: Yeah, that’s why he went to India, to Cochin. He arrived, I think, in January 1756, and the first thing they did was make sure that the prayer books were printed. And he did that because Leopold, he was from The Hague and knew the community leader there. He was actually living a couple of houses away from the community leader. They probably met a lot, and he contacted them. And the community leader was actually the banker, one of the bankers of the Prince of Orange, so he was like a court factor. And through this court factor, he’s called Tobias Boaz. He’s very known as well, but probably for this audience this is the first time… They managed to print the books in Amsterdam.

Nehemia: Oh, they printed it in Amsterdam! Wow, so they’re printing an Indian Jewish Siddur prayer book in Amsterdam. That’s amazing! Okay, that’s quite a story.

Mascha: So, they printed it in Amsterdam, and it was sent on the next boat, again to India. They did it quite fast because there’s a manuscript of the prayer books still remaining.

Nehemia: Where is that manuscript?

Mascha: It’s somewhere in Europe. I think it’s in… I have it in the library, but I didn’t write it down.

Nehemia: It’s fine, we’ll look it up. I’ll put up a link.

Mascha: In the UK. Yeah, one of the big ones. Yeah.

Nehemia: And who wrote that prayer book, or that manuscript? Was that Rahabi?

Mascha: It’s full of Yemenite verses, and it was probably written by a Yemenite. It was owned by someone. The book is from 1723 or something, it was quite old. So, they added an index to it to make it available for printing.

Nehemia: Wow. Very cool. Alright, that’s cool.

Mascha: They sent the manuscript to the Netherlands, and they received prayer books back.

Nehemia: Okay, so that’s amazing. So, you think stuff is going on in India in the 1700’s… They’re in this isolated community, which they kind of are, but not that isolated.

Mascha: No, not at all.

Nehemia: They’re having books printed in Amsterdam! It’s amazing.

Mascha: Yeah, they have books printed in Amsterdam because that was the obvious way. They probably didn’t have Hebrew characters for printing, because they had printing presses. By the way, not in the Dutch part of India, but they had it in Colombo. But instead of getting the characters, it’s much easier to just send it. They had two fleets; they had a spring fleet and an autumn fleet going back and forth.

Nehemia: Now there’s probably flights three times a day, but then there were two fleets a year. Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, it was a fleet of like four or five boats. Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: They went empty to the east and full back, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, wow.

Mascha: And they had a whole trade route as well. So, the main route was to Ceylon… well, actually South Africa, Ceylon, and then Indonesia. And they had a separate fleet going on from Sri Lanka all the way to the west coast of India and then all the way to Yemen.

Nehemia: Really? So, it’s interesting you say they left empty. They didn’t have any manufactured goods to sell in India or Indonesia?

Mascha: Probably they took…

Nehemia: Those wooden shoes or something?

Mascha: No, I don’t think so. Of course, you could find not wood, but iron and stuff like that.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: Yeah. So, there were some trade routes going towards the east.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mascha: Yeah, but most of it came…

Nehemia: They came probably with muskets and swords and stuff, probably.

Mascha: Yeah, yeah. That was a huge advantage if you had them.

Nehemia: Alright.

Mascha: But let me get back to that later. So, what he did, he was actually there to print books. But Ezekiel Rahabi already started in 1741, and that is 15 years earlier.

Nehemia: Wait… now we’re getting to the Hebrew New Testament. Alright guys, pay attention, this is the exciting part!

Mascha: And I want to finish off with a quote by Leopold van Dort. He actually wrote it and he’s a teacher. And he says, “To all who study, make all who are studious to learn, receive blessing, and praise from the Holy Word.”

Nehemia: Amen. Who could disagree with that? Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing this. This has been a pleasure, and I’m really excited about learning more about this. This is absolutely fascinating. Thank you.

Mascha: Thank you.

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!

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VERSES MENTIONED
1 Kings 9:26-28; 2 Chronicles 8:17-18

BOOKS MENTIONED
Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort, a learned Jewish-Christian man from Dordrecht
by Mascha van Dort

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Hebrew Voices #210 – The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1
Support Team Study – The Cairo Genizah: Part 4

OTHER LINKS
Mascha’s article

Book presentation Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort a learned Jewish Christian man from The Hague

Cambridge Oo.1.32

Cambridge Oo.1.16

Cambridge 1.16.2

Manchester Gaster MS 1616

Cambridge Catalogue

Walton Polyglot

The post Hebrew Voices #212 – Mysteries of India’s Hebrew New Testament: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

Watch the Sneak Peek of this episode of Support Team Study, The Taste of Scripture: Part 2. Nehemia discusses with Dr. Sophia Pitcher her revolutionary discovery of the ancient significance of the Biblical Hebrew accent marks.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio

Watch the full episode TOMORROW plus hundreds of hours of other in-depth studies by becoming a Support Team Member!

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If you have found Nehemia Gordon’s teachings to be of value, please consider supporting his efforts through his ministry Makor Hebrew Foundation.

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The post Support Team Study SNEAK PEEK! The Taste of Scripture: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #211, The Taste of Scripture: Part 1, Nehemia discusses with Dr. Sophia Pitcher her revolutionary discovery of the ancient significance of the Biblical Hebrew accent marks.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio TranscriptCOMING SOON

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Subscribe to "Nehemia Gordon" on your favorite podcast app!
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VERSES MENTIONED
Joshua 1:8
Luke 4:17-19

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Hebrew Voices #180 – SBL Reactions 2023: Part 1
Support Team Studies – SBL Reactions 2023: Part 2
Support Team Study – Bible Vowels of Ancient Israel
Hebrew Voices #142 – Sign Language of the Synagogue
Hebrew Voices #187 – Second Temple Hebrew in the Middle Ages: Part 1
Support Team Study – Second Temple Hebrew in the Middle Ages: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Moving On from the Law of Continuous Dichotomy | Sophia L Pitcher - Academia.edu

Sophia L Pitcher | University of the Free State - Academia.edu

Towards the Development of an Intonation-Based Prosodic Model for the Masoretic Cantillation Accents of Tiberian Hebrew
by Sophia Lynn Pitcher

The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents (1994)
by Bezalel Elan Dresher

https://deafbiblesociety.com

A treatise on the accentuation of the twenty-one so-called prose books of the Old Testament
A treatise on the accentuation of the three so-called poetical books of the O.T. : Psalms, proverbs, and Job
by Wickes, William, 1817?-1903

The post Hebrew Voices #211 – The Taste of Scripture: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

Watch the Sneak Peek of this episode of Support Team Study, The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 2,  Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan continues explaining how a Hebrew manuscript from India is connected to the book of Revelation.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

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Watch the full episode TOMORROW plus hundreds of hours of other in-depth studies by becoming a Support Team Member!

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The post Support Team Study SNEAK PEEK! The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode, Hebrew Voices #210, The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1, Prof. Meir Bar-Ilan tells Nehemia about how a Hebrew manuscript from India is connected to the book of Revelation.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

Download Audio Transcript

Hebrew Voices #210 – The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1

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

Meir: The Words of Gad the Seer has so many affinities with the Book of Revelation, I assume that both books come from the same time and even from the same area, which is from Israel, the Land of Israel.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Prof. Meir Bar Ilan at Bar Ilan University. He’s a professor in the Talmud Department and the Jewish History Department. Shalom, Prof. Bar-Ilan.

Meir: Shalom, shalom, Dr. Gordon.

Nehemia: I have to start with the question; how is it that your name is Bar-Ilan, and you’re at Bar Ilan University, and the university was founded by a man named Meir Bar Ilan, but not by you? This can’t be a coincidence!

Meir: This is not a coincidence. Both me and the university… me first, because I’m older, we are named after my late grandfather. I was born in 1951; the university was born in 1955-1956.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, I have the privilege to be a lecturer at Bar Ilan University, and believe me, not because of my nice eyes!

Nehemia: Okay. Well, Bar Ilan University is my alma mater, where I earned my PhD, my doctorate, so there’s a place in my heart for it.

I want to talk to you today about a book that’s certainly not known in the English-speaking world and frankly, isn’t really even known in the Hebrew-speaking world, which is a book that you researched and worked on, the book of the Words of Gad the Seer. Or for my English-speaking audience, it’s Gad. Not G-O-D, but G-A-D, Gad Ha’chozeh, Gad the Seer. Tell us, what is this book? Where was it found? When was it written? And how did it reach us?

Meir: Okay, these are too many questions, some of them are…

Nehemia: I know it’s a lot.

Meir: It’s a lot of questions, and some of them are highly complicated. So, we will begin first with the things that are easy to understand. So first, who was Gad? Gad, as you said, G-A-D, was a private prophet, or a seer, to King David. So, we are talking about a person who lived about 3,000 years ago. Period, that’s it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, he and King David are the protagonists of the book, The Words of Gad the Seer. Now, in the Bible…

Nehemia: So, he’s mentioned in the Bible. For example, First Chronicles 29:29, it mentions the words of Samuel the Seer, and Natan the Prophet, and Gad the Seer.

Meir: But what is more interesting is the fact that, in the Book of Chronicles, at the end of 1 Chronicles, it is stated that the prophet Samuel wrote his book with… He makes kind of a reference, like in modern studies, and he said that one of the books he was using was Divri Gad Ha’Chozeh, Words of Gad the Seer.

Nehemia: So, it’s one of the sources of 1 Chronicles.

Meir: It’s one of the sources of the Book of Samuel.

Nehemia: Ah, the Book of Samuel, okay. So, Chronicles is mentioning that there’s this book…

Meir: Now, first, there are certain people who do not believe this colophon, or this statement, which is one of the problems to understand the sources of the Book of Samuel, which is beyond the scope of this discussion. Furthermore, some scholars think that most of the attributed books that are mentioned in the Book of Chronicles, because there are many others… that one shouldn’t believe them. It’s a kind of a virtual library. But this is, again, not the issue here. In any event, we never heard… after the Book of Chronicles that mentioned Words of Gad the Seer, we never heard anything about it until the 18th century. It’s kind of a lost and found, kind of. We do not know.

Nehemia: Okay. Let me take a second here for the audience to read this verse, because I’m not sure they understand what we’re… So, this is in 1 Chronicles 29:29. I’ll read it from the JPS. “The acts of King David, early and late, are recorded in the History of Samuel the Seer, the History of Nathan the Prophet, and the History of Gad the Seer.” And you’re saying that some scholars look at that and say, “Chronicles is just making up sources. It didn’t really have a book in front of it called The Book of Gad the Seer.”

Meir: Right.

Nehemia: Some scholars are saying that. You’re not saying that.

Meir: Furthermore, you shouldn’t believe most of the Book of Chronicles. This is not the issue.

I’m not going to discuss the issue here, but we should think…

Nehemia: You’re saying that’s the view of many scholars. Okay.

Meir: Yeah. Well, it depends. In any event, we are talking now about a person that lived in the times of King David, that is the 10th century BCE, and in the Bible itself a book was attributed to him, and that book disappeared.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, we, the Jewish people, and anyone who knows anything about the classical world of literature, we know that most books from antiquity were lost during the ages. Some claim that it’s about what we have at hand. For example, if we are thinking of Aeschylus or Aristotle or any classical work that we have at hand today, some say that we have only about two percent of what was circulated in antiquity. We do not know; it’s a surmise. We do not know. But the Jewish people, since we had a lot of tragedies during the ages, it is most understandable that books could be lost. It’s very simple to understand that.

Now, we have no idea… nothing like that is mentioned in the Talmud or the Midrashim. So, we cannot verify, we cannot say anything about that book. So, after a long, long silence of about… according to this scheme, of about 2,800 years or so, here it comes that in Cochin, India… That is, if one thinks of India as the subcontinent, as a kind of a triangle, it’s down, down and west of India. There is a place named Cochin, south of Goa or in the land of Malabar, and there was a Jewish community that lived there for many centuries. At the very least, if they are not from the days of the Talmud, that is the Roman period, then at least in the 10th century the Jewish community was established there.

Nehemia: Wait a minute. So, you’re saying they could be from Talmudic times? Could they be older than that? Like, for example, it talks about how Solomon sent merchants to Ophir, and some people said Ophir is Sri Lanka.

Meir: Okay. Now first, let’s make it clear. Ophir is not Sri Lanka.

Nehemia: Ah, okay. Where is it?

Meir: Who said it’s Sri Lanka? I’ll tell you privately.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: But the bottom line… here’s another coincidence I’m talking about. I have been looking for Ophir for decades. I began my studies on this subject ever since I discovered this manuscript in 1981. And now I can assure you… and I’ll send you my paper on it, that Ophir is Sopara, or Nallasopara, which is about 30 miles north from Mumbai.

Nehemia: So, it’s in India.

Meir: It’s in India, I’m sure.

Nehemia: And the significance there, again, for people, is that Solomon sent out some kind of a trade mission with boats from Eilat to a place called Ophir to get gold.

Meir: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Absolutely. And we are talking about northern India, not southern India.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Meir: It makes a lot of difference during those times.

Nehemia: So, is it possible that there were Jews in Ophir, or Israelites in Ophir? Meaning, maybe not a lot, but that there was at least a trade mission or something that might have permanently been there.

Meir: There’s no doubt there were Jews there, but I do not think that these Jews… Well, some say that the community that is called Bnei Yisrael are descendants of these mariners who went there. The Judeans and people from Phoenicia that came together in a joint venture to Ophir, that is, as I told you, around Sopara north to Mumbai, that there could have been Jews there. But we are not talking about a community or a Jewish community there, we are talking about a much different community.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Just as there is no connection between Jews or non-Jews, whoever, in New York and Dallas, there is no connection whatsoever between Jews in Cochin and Mumbai.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, let’s go to Cochin. In 18th century Cochin, there was a community, and among these people lived their leader, a rabbi and most of all a merchant. And whoever knew him, all of them non-Jews, described him as a very unusual person and said very nice, unusual things about him. His name was Yechezkel Rachabi.

Nehemia: How did you say?

Meir: Rachabi. Reish-Chet-Bet-Yud, Rachabi.

Nehemia: Ah, Rachabi.

Meir: Rachabi was probably a descendant from Yemen, where there is a district, or a county named Rachaba.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: By the way, there are many people… the name Rachabi is well known among Yemenites until this very day in Israel.

Nehemia: Okay. And it wouldn’t be surprising that a Jew would come from Yemen to India because that was part of the international trade route.

Meir: Definitely! That’s not surprising at all. I want to explain it very simply. Because if you take a ship at that time, in the Middle Ages and even before that, from around the 4th century BCE until the 16th century and even later, if you take a boat from Aden, which is in southern Yemen, and you don’t do anything, just make sure that the sails are well enough, after about… you don’t do anything, after about 40 days you land in the land of Malabar. It’s very simple. And if it’s not Cochin, it’s a bit north or a bit south of Cochin. So, there were connections. Not only that, these connections were not only of trade, but of marriage and even more, and even Torah.

Nehemia: I’m sorry, what was the word?

Meir: Marriage, they married each other.

Nehemia: Marriage, okay. And by the way, there’s a Torah scroll at Cambridge that I’ve personally examined, which also came from the Malabar coast. And it’s 100 percent a Yemenite Torah scroll.

Meir: That’s it!

Nehemia: If it wasn’t written in Yemen, it was written by a scribe from Yemen…

Meir: Absolutely!

Nehemia: But probably it was written in Yemen.

Meir: Absolutely, because many people in Cochin… not all of them, but many of them, came from Yemen. And we know that from their names, like Saidi, for example, is definitely a Yemenite name.

Nehemia: Okay. So, a lot of the Jews in Cochin have roots or connections with Yemen.

Meir: Absolutely. And not only that, during the 18th century, the people in Cochin and people in Mocha… that is Mocha, after which the well-known coffee is named…

Nehemia: Oh, really?

Meir: Yeah. This is today’s Mocha in southern Yemen. They were kind of twin towns.

Nehemia: What towns?

Meir: Twin towns.

Nehemia: Twin towns, okay. They were sister cities, you’re saying, Cochin and Mocha.

Meir: Yes. And they even made a kind of a festival in Cochin in memory of things that happened to their forefathers in Mocha.

Nehemia: So, we have this Yechezkel Rachabi, who was a Yemenite Jew in Cochin in the 18th century…

Meir: He was a leader and a financier, and also a Talmid Chacham, and he held in his hands many books. One of them was the Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh.

Nehemia: Okay, so he has this book, The Words of Gad the Seer.

Meir: But he said nothing about that scroll, probably because he was too busy with his business. So, two generations passed, and in about 1806, an Anglican missionary by the name Claudius, the Reverend Claudius Buchanan, came to Cochin and he bought several manuscripts. He went there twice, by the way, in 1806 and in 1809, and he bought there about 15 manuscripts.

Nehemia: He bought there, you’re saying, he bought. And then he brought them back to England.

Meir: And then, a few years later, he came back to England. And he donated his manuscript to his alma mater at Cambridge.

Nehemia: Okay. So, for example, the Torah scroll I mentioned says on it that it was brought by Buchanan from the Malabar coast.

Meir: That’s it, that’s the person. And by the way, he went there on purpose. He was sure, he was a learned person, and he was sure that he’s going to find texts among the Jews and among Christians, because there are Christians in southern India, Christians from antiquity, not from the Portuguese. They are called St. Thomas Christians.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Buchanan was sure he would find there manuscripts highly valuable for scholarship of the New Testament, or the Old Testament. I cannot recall what he preferred, but in any event, he brought all the manuscripts to Cambridge, and one scholar at Cambridge even wrote his master’s degree… it’s a kind of anachronism. It wasn’t a master’s then, but he wrote a project on the book, a scroll of Chashi Aresh, or Megillat Achashverosh, and I can give you the bibliography if you are interested in that. It’s kind of an addition to the scroll of Esther.

But nothing happened with the manuscript he brought to Cambridge. They were there for about 80 years, almost 80 years. They were taking dust, waiting for a scholar to be learned. And then came Solomon Schechter. Solomon Schechter came to Cambridge; he came there in about 1890, around that year. He came there from Berlin, if I’m not mistaken, the time after he finished his… No, I think in Wien, he finished…

Nehemia: He came from Vienna. And for those wondering where they remember this name from, I’ve done programs on the Cairo Genizah, and Schechter was one of the great catalogers and discoverers of the Cairo Genizah.

Meir: But before he discovered… so to say, he did not discover the Genizah, by the way, but…

Nehemia: No, I know. He popularized it.

Meir: Let’s put it this way. Before he was affiliated with the Genizah, he was looking for manuscripts, a Jewish manuscript at Cambridge, and wrote a series of papers on Hebrew manuscripts at Cambridge. And he also paid attention to this scroll, Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh, that came from Cambridge, and he dedicated about…

Nehemia: And just to be clear, today, what he had access to is a codex. I mean, a book form. It’s not an actual scroll, right?

Meir: That’s correct. It looks like a codex. No, not looks, it is a codex. But it looks as if it was copied from a scroll, which is very unusual, very unusual. It looks very unusual, and I’m telling you, even after 40 years of study, more than 40 years, it is still unusual. I’ve never seen anything like that.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: But if you look at it, you have the impression that it was copied from a scroll, which is highly probable. At any event, Schechter wasn’t impressed by this manuscript. I mean, he said, “Well, it’s nothing from the Middle Ages.” All he had to say was something like that. That is, he degraded it, so to speak. He couldn’t say anything in particular about it.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Now, about a generation passed, and his student, his name was Israel Abrahams from England, he wrote a paper dedicated to his beloved teacher. He published it in a postscript to somebody else. In any event, it was published posthumously. And because of that, his paper, according to my eyes, suffers from several errata. And by the way, it should be mentioned, because I want to say something good about Abrahams. In the years before his death, the last years before his death, he lost his eyesight. And he had people to help him for looking at his academic work, so all I can say is that we have to excuse the errata in his paper. But the bottom line is that Divrei Gad Ha’Chozeh is a book from the Middle Ages, and we can see that it continued the thought line of Schechter, which is that the book reflects the Kabbalah of the Middle Ages.

Nehemia: Okay. So, both Schechter and Israel Abrahams are saying that The Words of Gad the Seer are…

Meir: That it’s nothing, don’t look at it.

Nehemia: That it’s not important. It’s influenced by Kabbalah from the Middle Ages.

Meir: Something like that.

Nehemia: Okay, alright. And by the way, this is part of a broader prejudice in Jewish studies against Kabbalistic literature before Gershom Scholem.

Meir: Absolutely.

Nehemia: Because you tell me, “Oh, it’s a 12th century Kabbalistic proto-Kabbalah.” Well, that’s kind of really interesting!

Meir: I’m sure! I want to tell you something. First of all, until this very day it’s not easy to grasp and to tell for sure the date of this manuscript, so people are a bit frustrated or a bit… how should I say that? They are like, “Well, it’s only from the Middle Ages.” Listen, even from the Middle Ages, it’s an actual letter, so don’t underestimate the manuscript. Now, in any event, this is not my line of thought, and I want to tell you the difference.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: When I found the paper of Abraham’s… kind of serendipitously… that is to say, I went to look like King Saul, who went to find the ass and found the melucha. He went to find the ass and he found the kingdom. So, I went to find something else, and it occurred to my heart…

Nehemia: This is referring to Saul searching for his father’s donkey.

Meir: Correct, correct.

Nehemia: And he ends up being anointed as king.

Meir: But in my case, I never found any kingdom! All I found is a manuscript that had already been noted, but not correctly understood. So, what I did was, first of all I copied it, to have all the text on my computer. And I already put it on my computer in 1984, on my first computer. Yes.

Nehemia: What kind of computer was there with Hebrew in 1984?

Meir: Oh, that’s a very good question! It’s a name that you have never heard; its name was a Pied Piper. You never heard the name, I’m sure, and all those who are more affiliated with computers, all I can say right now is that it was on 7-bit. That is before DOS. DOS is 8-bit, and later it was 64-bit and 128-bit, but I’m talking about 7-bit, which is the level of, so to speak, of the Dragon. Some of the audience may ask their grandfather, “What is a 7-bit?”

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, first of all, I copied all the manuscript. And at the time, it took me a lot of trouble, a lot of time. At the time, I only had a microfilm in black and white, and it took me many years to study the text and to make all the comments and then to realize what I’m going to do with it, how to publish it and so forth. And after, to make a long story short, because it was a really long story, it took me more than 34 years of study until I published the manuscript with all the commentary and everything that is needed to understand it, and even with the English translation. Of course, with the English translation, because I wanted the audience, people who do not necessarily know Hebrew might find interest in this book, especially because it’s a book on apocalyptic… It reflects an apocalyptic movement. If not a movement, at least a community of people, of Jews, that had visions. And this community… I can say more than one author wrote this book. All I can say about that community is that they were non-Rabbinics. What it is exactly is a question, but let’s put it this way. Today we are aware of Judaism, so we think that in antiquity there was Judaism. The exact word, to have a better understanding, is, according to Morton Smith and Jack Neusner, the exact word is Judaisms. There were several kinds of Judaism, and the book of Words of Gad the Seer came from such a community, which all I can tell you for sure… they were Jews, for sure. They believed in the Torah and the commandments, et cetera, et cetera, but they were non-Rabbinics.

Nehemia: So, what century are we in? We’re not talking about the actual Gad the Seer from the time of David, are we?

Meir: So, now we are talking about pseudo-epigraphy. What is interesting about this book is that, in the third chapter, the author writes about himself, “I am Gad the Seer.” He names himself as if he lived in the 10th century. Unfortunately, I can tell you for sure after studying the text that the text is not from the 10th century BCE.

Nehemia: Then when is it from?

Meir: Some may say, “Wow. If it’s not, you can close the book, and I have nothing to say about the book.” But from my point of view, this book belongs to such a library, a virtual library, of pseudo-epigraphy because we know we have, from antiquity, all sorts of books that are attributed to biblical authors or biblical heroes or whatever. And this book, the only difference is that the other books came to us only through other languages; translations to Greek, Latin, Armenian, and so forth, and in this particular case we have the book in Hebrew. So, this is very unusual. And the Hebrew is also very unusual, which makes it so difficult to realize and to make a definite conclusion concerning the question when this text was written. So, let’s put it straight; it’s not from the 10th century BCE.

Now, I think… well, in my book, I made a long discussion of this subject, and I do not want to repeat myself. Let’s put it this way. I prefer to think that the book comes from the 1st century of the Common Era.

Nehemia: In the 1st century CE, or AD, as Christians say.

Meir: After the destruction of the Temple.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And what really kind of persuades me is that it’s heavily affiliated with the Book of Revelation, the apocalypse, which was…

Nehemia: So, the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, which is from roughly…

Meir: It’s not roughly… well, some scholars say they know exactly, and they think it’s from 96, the year 96.

Nehemia: That’s very specific.

Meir: And if you do not want it from that year, it’s also good for me to say from the end of the 1st century, let’s put it this way.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, since The Words of Gad the Seer has so many affinities with the Book of Revelation, I assume that both books come from the same time and even from the same area, which is from Israel, the Land of Israel.

Of course, the Book of Revelation wasn’t written in Israel, but the author originated from Israel.

That’s for sure, from the Land of Israel. That’s not the issue. The issue is that The Words of Gad the Seer was written for sure in the Land of Israel, and for many reasons, but it’s not 100% persuasive it comes from the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd century. But both authors of the Book of Revelation and the book of Words of Gad the Seer have a very similar background, and their Judaism is a Judaism of apocalyptically Judaism.

Nehemia: Tell us what that means. What does it mean that it’s apocalyptic?

Meir: Apocalyptic is that they have…

Nehemia: I have an idea, but let’s assume the audience doesn’t know.

Meir: It’s very simple, very simple. Gad the Seer describes himself as looking and seeing a vision. In his vision, he sees a shepherd, that is God. He looks like a shepherd. And on his head, his head is a kind of sun, and on his shoulders, he holds a lamb. And the lamb praises the Lord. What is it?

Nehemia: Praise what?

Meir: It praises the Lord.

Nehemia: So, he’s holding a lamb on his shoulders, and the lamb is praising God.

Meir: Not as you did it, on both your shoulders. Only on his right shoulder.

Nehemia: Oh, on one shoulder. And by the way, it’s reversed on Zoom.

Meir: Later I’ll send it to you. After we finish the Zoom, I’ll send you the text.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, what is interesting about it is that it’s a whole world of sea mines. Both books use the same treasure of apocalyptic literature. And so, here is one vision. In the vision, God tells the seer about the future, and there are another two visions in the book, so the book has three different visions. Not only that, but the book, part of the book, was written by a professional scribe. And what’s interesting about this specific chapter, chapter 7 of The Words of Gad the Seer, is that the author was aware that the story in the Book of Kings and the parallel in Chronicles are not the same text. What he did was a kind of harmonization of both texts, making two texts into one.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: So, what is interesting about this is that, until now, when we talk about the Bible and its sources, we never saw any sources like that. It is just a kind of learned scholar who projects that they were sources. In this case, in The Words of Gad the Seer, you can see it in your own eyes. You can see the source. We do know the source of Samuel and the source of Chronicles, and here you can see how he intermingles and makes harmonization in each and every verse, which is so unique. There is nothing like that in the whole of Hebrew literature.

Nehemia: Wow.

Meir: It is wow! It is wow! That’s it. You see?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Meir: So, what I have to say to Schechter and to Abrahams is, “Before you degrade it, or before you make your statement about its affinities to Kabbalah, or to this date or another date, first you have to study the text. You never saw anything like that. There is nothing like that in the whole of Jewish literature. First, look at it, and then make your observation, or your comments, or whatever.” What they did was vice versa; first they made their comments, and then they moved away because they were busy to study other things. I wasn’t like that. I admit it took me many years, but I think that my study is a bit thorough. That’s it.

Nehemia: So, when you say it’s apocalyptic, tell me if I’m understanding this right. You have an author who’s describing a vision of… sort of like he’s taking a tour of heaven…

Meir: I’m sorry, I want to make it more precise. The book has 14 chapters. Each chapter is a different literary unit, unlike the Bible. Unlike the Bible. So, you have to discuss and to study each and every chapter from the very beginning.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And I can approve, if you want me to, that the book was written by more than one scribe, more than one author.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: Which tells us that we are talking, not about one person; rather, about a kind of community. Let’s talk about Jeremiah the prophet with his student Baruch, who committed to writing his prophecies. So, we are talking about Nevi’im and Bnei Nevi’im, the intellectual “children of the prophets”. So, here we have the same phenomena. And it is clear because, for example, the fourth chapter in the Words of Gad the Seer is a folk story. It’s a very interesting story. It is not apocalyptic. It’s very interesting, but those who are interested in apocalyptic wouldn’t find any interest in this chapter, and the other way around.

Nehemia: So, parts of it are apocalyptic, where there’s someone who’s describing sort of like a tour of the heavens or something like this, right?

Meir: No, no.

Nehemia: Because some people hear apocalyptic, they say, “Oh, the world’s coming to an end…”

Meir: No, no, not necessarily.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: It’s true that some of the visionaries are related to heaven and hell, but this is not the case.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And by the way, there is another vision. There are two different visions. Another one is about seeing the archangel Michael, translated literally, “who is like God”, who makes a war against Samael and defeats him.

Nehemia: Wait. So Michael, or Michael, is fighting against Samael, which is like maybe some demon or something.

Meir: He’s a kind of a devil, kind of the antichrist, or whoever you want to call him. And there is another third apocalyptic vision where the seer is in heaven. He sees the heavenly tribunal, the Lord, as a judge on the day of Rosh Hashanah. But it’s a bit different than the Rabbinic one; it’s a bit different, it’s not Rabbinic. It’s similar, it is close, but it is not.

Nehemia: So, the point I was trying to make is, when the layman says “apocalyptic”, what they sometimes understand is the end of the world. But scholars are talking about a prophet who sees things in the heavenly realm in a vision.

Meir: “Apocalyptic” is not necessarily the end of the world, it is more…

Nehemia: Right.

Meir: …because the origin of the word is something that is hidden or concealed, that we are able to look, to see. This is the meaning. So, here this is really what happens.

Nehemia: So, how do you know it’s non-Rabbinic? That’s very interesting to me. Give us some examples of things that wouldn’t be Rabbinic that are in The Words of Gad the Seer.

Meir: First of all… okay, I’ll give you… first of all, it works on retelling the Bible, which is definitely not Rabbinic work. Then he makes a statement that he hears a prophecy from the Lord. Once again, this is not Rabbinic. Apocalyptic is non-Rabbinic. Pseudo-epigraphy is non-Rabbinic. Hagiography, which means we will describe a holy man and see his deeds during his lifetime, which is typical to Christianity, but is very different in Judaism. We don’t know of any hagiography before the Middle Ages. So, this hagiography about King David is very unusual and it’s not Rabbinic. He also used…

Nehemia: So, you’re saying the entire genre, the entire type of, for example, paraphrasing the Bible, is not a Rabbinical thing. For example.

Meir: Definitely.

Nehemia: Okay. And you have that, for example, in The Book of Jubilees, where it’s retelling the Bible in a paraphrased sort of way.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: But to some extent, isn’t that what the Targum does? It kind of paraphrases the Bible. Well, I guess not.

Meir: It’s not, it’s definitely not.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: And if you feel that I didn’t persuade you, it’s okay with me. I’ll send you my paper and you may take sides. Yes, please.

Nehemia: So, for example, you said there’s something where it reflects something in Jewish law and it’s contrary to what’s in the Mishnah. That was the example you didn’t want to give.

Meir: Suppose one…

Nehemia: It’s probably very technical.

Meir: Well, it’s a rule in Mishnah and Bava Metzia. It’s really beyond the scope here.

Nehemia: Okay, it’s probably too technical.

Meir: But also, let’s say an epitaph of the Lord; how one is supposed to call the Lord. In this book, there are all sorts of nicknames, so to speak, of the Lord that are not known elsewhere.

Nehemia: Like, for example, what?

Meir: I’m sorry… not known in the Rabbinic world.

Nehemia: Okay, what would be an example of that?

Meir: Shaddai and Tzva’ot are known, but they are Rabbinic. They are known in the Bible, but not in the Rabbinic world.

Nehemia: So, in other words, nobody…

Meir: … a list of epitaphs of the Lord, which is definitely non-Rabbinic because the rabbis prohibited that.

Nehemia: Wait. So I’m really interested in that, because that’s kind of one of my areas of study. Where is that? I have your book here in front of me. Do you know where that is?

Meir: I’ll send you my paper. I’ll send you my specific paper.

Nehemia: But the list of epithets or titles of God, where is that in Gad the Seer?

Meir: I think it’s chapter 8 or 9. Let me open it and I’ll tell you in a minute.

Nehemia: Okay.

Meir: The book is here; the book is about 5,227 words. And it’s not…

Nehemia: So, for example, I’m looking here at chapter 8 of your translation. I guess it’s verse 183.

Meir: Wait a second until I find it.

Nehemia: Okay. Because that really is interesting to me. And while you’re looking for that, is part of what you’re saying that the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is Jewish…

Meir: It comes from Jewish origin.

Nehemia: …but the way it’s written is non-Rabbinic. What’s that?

Meir: It comes from Jewish origin, but non-Rabbinic. We assume, we think, that since Judaism as we know it is Rabbinic, and we make a kind of a reduction, all Judaism in antiquity was the same, and it wasn’t.

Nehemia: So, the Book of Revelation is a certain type of literature that is non-Rabbinic. We don’t find that in Rabbinical literature, is what you’re saying. Okay.

Meir: But it comes up in antiquity.

Nehemia: But then parts of Gad the Seer are the same genre. Sorry to put you on the spot, but that’s really interesting to me.

Meir: Chapter 8, as I told you, verse number 183.

Nehemia: Okay. Let me read that from your translation. Guys, I’ll put a link. This is page 9 in Roman numerals. He has the English translation of The Words of Gad the Seer, and it says here, “Hear O Israel, your God and my God is one, the only one, and unique. There is no one like His individuality, hidden from all. He was and is and will be.” Ooh, that’s interesting. “He fills His place, but His place doesn’t fill Him. He sees but is not seen. He tells and knows futures for He is God without end and there is no end to His end. Omnipotence, God of truth, whole worlds are full of His glory.”

Meir: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow. Oh, wow! What’s that? Keep reading. Alright. “And he gave each one free choice. If one wants to do good, he will be helped, and if one wants to do evil, a path will be opened for him. For that we will worship our God, our King, our Lord, our Savior with love and awe. For your wisdom is the fear of the Lord and your cleverness is to depart from evil.”

Meir: Also, Nehemia, please open chapter 12, verse 267.

Nehemia: Okay, let me find that. Alright. So, this is on page Roman numeral 12, 267. So, it starts out in 266. “These are the words of David before his death, and he spoke unto the Lord and Israel and he spoke, saying,” verse 267, “God, the blessed, the great, the only one, guileless,” that’s one of the titles of God here, “just, dreadful, benefactor of the miserable, darling, the senior, Shaddai, holy, have mercy upon the vine, thine good inheritance. The Lord will answer us in the day that we call.” So, there’s all these different titles for God, is what you’re pointing out here. So, that’s unusual. That wouldn’t be found in Rabbinical literature, that you have these series of titles.

Meir: That is correct. Not only that you cannot find it, it is forbidden!

Nehemia: Ah, tell us about that.

Meir: Okay. There is a story in the Palestinian Talmud where it is stated that the two rabbis went to southern villages in the Land of Israel to “la’asot shalom”, that is, to judge between people, and they heard a chazan who said,”Ha’el ha’gadol ha’gibor ve’ha’norah ve’ha’amitz,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and they stopped the chazan and told him, “You are not allowed to do so.” And therefore, what one says in his prayer is just the biblical epitaph, “Ha’el ha’gadol ha’gibor ve’ha’norah,” because one is not allowed to make more epitaphs that are not found in the Bible.

Nehemia: So, if God has certain titles in the Bible, you can’t just start adding your own titles.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: And so, in the Jerusalem Talmud, they’re rebuking this cantor for making up his own titles. Which, by the way, shows somebody did it, right?

Meir: Of course!

Nehemia: But it was rejected by the rabbis, this type of thing. Fascinating, wow, really fascinating.

Meir: By the way, the verse we just mentioned, 267, if I’m not mistaken, was found after I published my book with a special merit. That is to say that the words make an acrosticon, an acrosticon that is the initials of the ineffable name in Hebrew.

Nehemia: Okay, so the first letter of each word or something spells Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey.

Meir: Correct.

Nehemia: Wow!

Meir: It’s a kind of a secret concealed in the text.

Nehemia: Okay, that’s very cool. Wow.

Meir: For that, there is another paper.

Nehemia: Well, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much, Professor Bar-Ilan. This is absolutely fascinating. We’re going to have to have you back on to talk about stylometry and some of the other topics.

Meir: No problem at all. I’ll be honored.

Nehemia: Because there’s so much more. Fascinating stuff.

Meir: Thank you.

Nehemia: Thank you so much. Shalom.

Meir: Shalom, shalom.

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VERSES MENTIONED
1 Chronicles 29:29
1 Kings 9:28; 10:11; 1 Chronicles 29:4; 2 Chronicles 8:18; 9:10
1 Samuel 9-10
Words of Gad the Seer 8:183-185
Words of Gad the Seer 12:266-270
Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 9:1
Words of Gad the Seer p.97 v. 153
Revelation 2:11, 20:6, 20:14, and 21:8
Isaiah 22:14; 65:15; Jeremiah 51:57 (Aramaic translations)

BOOKS MENTIONED
Words of Gad the Seer
by Meir Bar-Ilan

Targum and Testament: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew: A Light on the New Testament (1972) (pages 76, 123, 148, 156)
by Martin McNamara

Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort, a learned Jewish-Christian man from Dordrecht
by Mascha van Dort

RELATED EPISODES
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Hebrew Voices #191 – The Cairo Genizah: Part 3
Support Team Study – The Cairo Genizah: Part 4

OTHER LINKS
Meir Bar-Ilan on Academia

(PDF) The Words of Gad the Seer: The Author's Opponents and the Date of its Composition

(PDF) THE DATE OF THE WORDS OF GAD THE SEER

(PDF) מקורו הגיאוגרפי של ספר דברי גד החוזה

(PDF) The Discovery of the Words of Gad the Seer

Substitutes for the Tetragrammaton
by Jacob Z. Lauterbach

תחליפים לשם ההוויה בכתבי יד עבריים מימי הביניים בעלי תאריך עד 1300 (עם תוספת לביזנטיון עד 1350 ותימן עד 1400), תפוצתם הכרונולוגית, האזורית והסגנונית

דוקס, קרינה; ירושלים : האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים; תשס"ג 2003

https://huji.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/972HUJI_INST/9os3m6/alma990013502760203701

Immanuel van Dort's Hebrew Translation of the Qur'ān and its Arabic Sources
by Basal Nazir

The post Hebrew Voices #210 – The Lost Book of Gad the Seer: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

Watch the Sneak Peek of this episode of Remember the Bibas Babies, where Nehemia and Lynell explore how to pray and respond to evil, diving into biblical guidance on repentance, forgiveness, and dealing with enemies. They examine key passages from the Old and New Testament to shed light on what the Bible actually says about how to handle challenging circumstances with faith and grace. Don’t miss this powerful discussion!

I look forward to reading your comments!

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The post Sneak Peek! STS – Remember the Bibas Babies appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

Watch the Sneak Peek of this Support Team Study, Read Like a Tiberian Jew: Part 2, where Nehemia continues his time travel with Rabbi Dr. David Moster to tackle the pronunciation of the most controversial Hebrew letter.

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https://youtu.be/DBlgBk-WFOc

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The post Support Team Study SNEAK PEEK! Read Like a Tiberian Jew: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #209, Read Like a Tiberian Jew: Part 1, Nehemia steps back in time with Rabbi Dr. David Moster to hear a reconstruction of how the Jewish scribes who preserved the Hebrew Bible pronounced Hebrew.

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Hebrew Voices #209 – Read Like a Tiberian Jew: Part 1

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

David: Are you ready?

Nehemia: Yeah, sure.

David: Here it is, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Let’s hear it.

David: We are stepping in a time machine back to the city of Tiberias in the year 930.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices! This is Nehemia Gordon and I’m here today with Rabbi Dr. David Moster. He is the founder of the Institute of Biblical Culture, which you can find online, and they have a really strong YouTube presence. And now, I’ve had him before on the program, but now he has a new title. He’s the Director of the Online Biblical Hebrew Program at the JTS, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Shalom, Rabbi Dr. David Moster.

David: Hi, Nehemia, and thank you for having me back again. I’ve seen you a few times since I was last on the program, but it’s good to be here with you, recording. So, thanks for having me back.

Nehemia: David, what is the JTS and what is their Online Biblical Hebrew Program?

David: The Jewish Theological Seminary is the university arm of the Conservative Jewish movement. And that’s Conservative with a capital C, meaning a denomination, not necessarily the conservative movement in America today. Those two are unrelated.

Nehemia: It’s Conservative, that’s the name of the denomination. It’s not that they’re politically conservative.

David: Yeah. One hundred years ago, 120 years ago, the idea was that, on one side was the Orthodox branch of Judaism, which was keeping all the laws of the rabbis. And then, on the other side was a Reformed part of Judaism, which was getting rid of most of the laws of the rabbis and worshiping in a different, new way. And so, the Conservative was somewhere in the middle, and said, “We want to keep the laws of kashrut, of kosher. We want to keep the Hebrew of our synagogues. We want to keep the Torah study, but we can relax in certain areas as well, some of the laws.” And that was a hundred-plus years ago.

But nowadays in America, and it’s not necessarily only in Judaism, but the denominations are becoming much more fluid, and you have people flowing between one and the other.

Nehemia: There’s a term that you’ll hear them say, “Conservadox,” which is someone who goes to a conservative synagogue but they consider themselves orthodox, or vice versa.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Let me make this observation. So, conservative… maybe the most famous conservative with, I don’t know if it’s a small C or a big C, in America, is Ben Shapiro, who’s a conservative political commentator. And that has nothing to do… he’s actually Orthodox, not Conservative.

David: Right.

Nehemia: So, it’s not politically conservative necessarily, it’s the name of the denomination. That’s just worth mentioning.

David: Yeah, that’s an interesting point. So, he’s a conservative, but also a non-Conservative. That’s right.

Nehemia: He’s Orthodox, and he, I think, has very unflattering things to say about Conservative, let’s put it that way, religiously.

David: Well, yeah. The thing is, in the history of Judaism, when people split off from each other and worship differently, then that leads to divisions.

Nehemia: The irony is that when the Reform movement was founded in Germany, the sign that you were Reform and not… because Conservative didn’t exist yet. I don’t know that it was even called Orthodox at the time… whatever it was, non-Reform, was that the rabbi would give his sermon in German and not Yiddish, which is mind-boggling. That would be the equivalent of you giving your sermon in your synagogue with the New York accent versus the standard American accent. It’s almost ridiculous.

David: Yeah. Looking back, it’s not a big deal, right?

Nehemia: Right.

David: But you can imagine in 100 years from now, someone looking back at us and saying, “Wow, they were arguing and bickering.” So, yeah, these are old divisions that have persisted for more than a century.

Nehemia: But the important thing, really, for what we’re talking about is, JTS, Jewish Theological Seminary, is a very respected and renowned institution. It is a combination of a Jewish seminary, meaning if you want to get Rabbinical ordination, you can do it through the JTS, if I’m not mistaken.

David: Correct.

Nehemia: And it’s a university. You can also go there and study just regular university subjects. Is that right?

David: Yeah. Graduate school… almost all of the classes taught at JTS are related in some way to Tanakh, Bible, biblical history, Rabbinic history, Jewish history. And also, it’s located right next to Columbia University and across the street from Union Theological Seminary, which is a non-denominational Christian seminary. And so, a lot of the students can take classes all in this area. And also, New York City as a whole has a lot of great institutions for Jewish studies, like, Yeshiva University is just 50 blocks north. And there’s four of them in other places.

Nehemia: Got you, okay. So, what is the online biblical Hebrew program at JTS? I want to talk about pronunciation of Hebrew, but you have this new exciting title and role, and I don’t want people to miss that. And then we’ll talk about the ancient pronunciation of Hebrew, which is really what we’re coming to do here.

David: Well, we have a certificate program, and the way it’s currently built is that you come in, and we’ll teach you the basics of grammar. And over four classes… by the end of that fourth class, we’re reading chapters of Tanakh, of the Hebrew Bible, together, and you are translating your own. And then we have a new aspect called the Capstone Project, where each student would pick a chapter of the Tanakh, whatever chapter they want, for whatever reason… Some people have a specific Psalm that has always spoken to them. Other people have a coin that relates to some biblical law or something. And so, people will find something that interests them, and then what they’re going to do is translate it on their own and go over it with me.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: So, we really are going from… I don’t want to say zero to sixty, because right now, all the students who walk in our door, they’re already able to read the letters and pronounce the words of the Tanakh, but not necessarily translate them. We are, right now, working on creating an introductory class, which would help people who’ve never learned the Hebrew alphabet learn to read. And that first class would simply be just reading, no translating. We would translate some things, but those would be names or place names. But we would just read so that within that class, people can also join our program.

Nehemia: Okay.

David: It’s been thriving. We have more than 100 students.

Nehemia: Wow.

David: And thank God, each of our classes has been sold out. And so, we’ve had a wait list on every single class.

Nehemia: So, if people listening want to come in and sign up, they’d better do it now, because they’re going to end up waiting either way.

David: Yeah. You can just google Biblical Hebrew Jewish Theological Seminary, JTS. That’s probably the simplest thing to do.

Nehemia: We’ll put a link on NehemiasWall.com.

David: Yeah. We’ll put a link in the podcast description. We’ll try and get a link there, too. But basically, if you search “Biblical Hebrew” and “JTS”, you’ll find our program.

Nehemia: So, let me ask this… and I’m just hypothetically saying, is there a size limit on the chapter? Does it have to be… Like, if somebody comes and says, “I want to do Psalm 119,” you probably tell them…

David: How many verses are in Psalm 119?

Nehemia: It’s the longest one. I don’t know, it’s over 180.

David: I think it’s 176.

Nehemia: Oh, okay, it could be. It’s eight times 22; I’m bad at math.

David: Okay, give me a minute. I’m going to look it up right now while we’re talking, Psalm 119.

Nehemia: What I really want to get to is, if somebody comes to you and says, “The chapter I’m really passionate about, I really want to know, I want to be able to translate myself, is Isaiah 53.” This is the Jewish Theological Seminary; would that be acceptable?

David: Of course!

Nehemia: Okay. Because I’ve been told that Jews don’t read that, it’s a forbidden chapter. Is that true?

David: Nehemia, a forbidden chapter… meaning what? People are ripping it out of the Bibles?

Nehemia: No, they’re not allowed to read it.

David: Wow.

Nehemia: You haven’t heard that? Have you ever heard that?

David: No.

Nehemia: Okay. So, here’s what the listeners have to understand. A lot of Christians will sit down every night before they go to bed, and they’ll read a chapter of the Bible. Jews generally don’t do that. I was close to somebody who was the gabbai of a synagogue, so he’s the equivalent in Christianity of a deacon, and I had a conversation about something in the book about Jephthah, Yiftach in the Book of Judges, and I could see he’d never heard of him. And I said, “Have you ever read the Book of Judges?” And he admitted, he’d never in his life read it, and he had no interest in reading it.

So, the truth is that it’s not… the average Jew, have they read any chapter in Isaiah that isn’t part of, let’s say, the Haftarah? That’s the question.

David: So, the observation you’re making is… One of the great commentators in Judaism, his name was Rashi. Well, his name wasn’t Rashi, it was Shlomo ben Yitzhak. Solomon, the son of Isaac. His acronym is Rashi. He had a grandson, Rashbam, who said that “Nobody’s studying the Bible. Everybody’s studying the Talmud.”

Nehemia: That’s a great quote. Where’s that quote? I love that.

David: It’s just… Yeah, and so that was one of his…

Nehemia: So, now you’ve challenged me. Now I’m opening up Isaiah 53 to see if there are commentaries on it, because if there’s no commentaries, then it’s probably right nobody read it. Okay, so Rashi has a commentary on Isaiah 53. I’m just looking here on M.G. HaKeter, Rabbi Yosef Hara…

David: Ibn Ezra.

Nehemia: Ibn Ezra, Eliezer of Beaugency, Radak, Isaiah of Trani. I’m not sure who Yosef Caspi is; that’s not a well-known commentary, at least for me.

David: No.

Nehemia: So, alright, there’s over just…

David: Let me…

Nehemia: Almost instantly, I can pull up over half a dozen commentaries on it. So, I guess people were reading it.

David: Let me, with one stone, get two birds here. So, your question was, can you pick a topic of what you want?

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And also, the length.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, I’ll tell you. The Capstone Project is optional.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

David: I tell people, “It’s only if you want to do this.” We give the students a set time limit. We say, “If after three months you don’t do this, we’re going to send you the certificate anyway.” Why do we do that? Because… Nehemia, you’re a doctor. You have a PhD. You might have seen through the years, or met somebody who’s doing a PhD, say, “Hi, how are you doing? What are you up to?” They say, “I’m getting a PhD,” and they say, “How’s it going?” They say, “I’m in year 17 and I’m about to start my dissertation.” And then, it’s like people get stuck in these academics…

Nehemia: It’s true, it’s true.

David: We don’t want that. I say, “If you don’t finish it…”

Nehemia: It’s definitely true. Go ahead, yeah.

David: Not only… you mentioned Psalm 19 is 176 verses, but there’s another psalm that’s only three verses. If somebody wants that psalm, they can do that psalm.

Nehemia: Well, I’m going to put a challenge out to people to join the JTS Hebrew program, which I honestly don’t know anything about. You just told me about it a few minutes ago. But I know you’re the director, so it’s going to be a good thing. And we should have a flood of people who say, “I want to read Isaiah 53 and I want to translate it myself.” And I just want to be clear; you’re not going to push some Rabbinical agenda on them. You’re going to let them understand what the words actually mean.

David: Here’s a big secret that people who don’t read the Hebrew of the Tanakh might not know.

Nehemia: Uh-oh.

David: It’s an open secret. Whatever translation you’re using, even passages in Isaiah, when translators are just translating the words, it’s not necessarily going to be as broken down on different divisions of religion as you might expect. Like, you can look at Christian commentators on Isaiah and translators and say, “Well, wait, that could have been written by a Jewish group.” You can look at a Jewish group and you might not know what’s different between it and a Christian group.

So, it depends on translation by translation, and for something like that, I would definitely tell the students, “Let’s try and get the Hebrew as much as we can, figure out what it means at the basic level.” And then, “Now, how do you want to translate that? It’s up to you.” How many layers of interpretation?

Nehemia: Okay.

David: And Nehemia, this isn’t new. The ancient translators… just look at the Aramaic Targum. The Aramaic Targum was a translation, and it added great amounts of material to the translation. So, we try to avoid that. But at the end of the day, it’s each person…

Nehemia: Well, the Aramaic Targum is more of a paraphrase. The equivalent would be like the New Living Translation, where you think you’re reading… and it’ll be like, “Hey man.” It’ll use modern… literally instead of “behold” it’ll be, “hey dude”. I don’t know if that’s an actual valid example, but it’s that type of thing. And “behold” anymore is an archaic word. What does it even mean? So, behold means something like “check it out”.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: It means, “look”, is literally what it means.

David: It means “look,” yeah. So, I call this biblical English. So, a word like behold, probably no one’s ever said that to you.

Nehemia: Not in normal speech.

David: Not at the Dollar Market, like, “Behold, here’s a sale!”

Nehemia: No, they’ll say “check it out”.

David: “Check it out,” that’s exactly what I mean. “Behold” is “look”.

Nehemia: Alright. So, I don’t know… this is such a great topic. I want to go to your video where you talk about the pronunciation of biblical Hebrew. We might have to save that for part two. We’re going to continue… But I want to go back here to studying Hebrew. So, you’re saying people have to have a basic, at this point, knowledge of being able to read the Hebrew alphabet.

David: We’re working on a new class, yeah. Hopefully by the time that this airs, we’ll have a new class ready for people, if they’re interested in learning to read the Hebrew letters and pronunciation.

Nehemia: So, this comes to the question of pronunciation. So, you have… your most popular video on YouTube has over 200,000… 242,000 views, and it’s called: What did ancient Hebrew sound like? Is that the pronunciation you’re going to teach them? Or, which pronunciation do you guys use at JTS on the course?

David: So, here’s the thing, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: I want to ask you a question. Did someone ever come to you and said, “How should I pronounce this biblical word?” Or “How should I pronounce this verse?” Have you ever heard that before?

Nehemia: Only on every day that ends in a Y!

David: Okay, every day that ends in a Y.

Nehemia: Seven days a week I get that question!

David: So, I get that all the time too. “How should I pronounce this?” “How should I pronounce that?” And it’s a bothersome question, and I’ve come to the realization of why it’s so tricky. Because when you’re studying the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and somebody says, “How should I pronounce it?” Well, what do you mean, “How should I pronounce it”? Do you mean, “How to pronounce it today in Israel?” That’s one way. Do you mean, “How would Moses have pronounced it?” “How would the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls have pronounced it?” “How would Jesus have pronounced it?” “How would the rabbis of the Talmud pronounce it?”

Or, for example, a lot of people today say, “My parents came from Yemen. This is how they pronounced it in Yemen.” Or “My grandparents came from Iraq. This is how they pronounced it in Iraq,” or Iran, or Morocco, or Italy. So, there’s dozens of Jewish pronunciations historically. So, basically, when somebody asks, “How should you pronounce this word,” it’s a loaded question because they’re basically saying, “Tell me how to pronounce it according to one historical place and time.” That’s basically what they’re asking.

So, here’s the thing. There’s one thing that everyone who reads the Tanakh can agree on; that we are reading the words of the ancient, ancient biblical period, but we’re also reading the vowels and vowel pointings of a small group of scribes, known as the Masoretes, from the 900’s, maybe the 800’s and the 1000’s. So, there’s a small group of scribes that influenced everyone since then. And every single Bible that your listeners have ever used and every Bible on your shelf… I don’t know if that’s a real shelf behind you, Nehemia, or not.

Nehemia: No, that’s a shelf at the Bologna University Library. It’s a photo I took on my iPhone.

David: Okay. So, if there’s a Bible in that library…

Nehemia: I have a shelf in the other room. But in this room, I have a blank white wall. It’s not very interesting, that’s why I have this up here.

David: So, everybody, every Tanakh, Hebrew Bible that you’ve ever seen, Christian Old Testament, it’s all gone through a small group of scribes in a small place, the city of Tiberias, on the Kinneret, the Galilee. And then it went through that group, and it went through one person. It’s like a lightning rod. It all went through one person named Aaron Ben Asher.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: And he wrote the famous Aleppo Codex. So, basically the question is, how do you pronounce Hebrew? There is a scholar named Geoffrey Kahn, and I believe he’s been on your program, correct?

Nehemia: Yes, Professor Geoffrey Kahn from the University of Cambridge. He’s been on the program, yes.

David: And Geoffrey Kahn, I don’t know if he started the school at Cambridge, but Cambridge has a whole group of scholars focused on the Masoretes. And he said, “Well, I’m going to try and figure out how Hebrew sounded in the town of Tiberias in the year 930, give or take a century, in the 900’s.” And he said, “I don’t know how you should pronounce it in Israel today. I don’t know how Moses pronounced it. I don’t know how Deborah sang her song, the Song of Deborah, but I’ll tell you how these little vowel signs and all these millions of markings, what these actually mean.”

And so, what he did is, he wrote a book. Let me show you. I’ll share my screen. Here we have the JTS Biblical Hebrew program, where you can register for a course. But let’s go over here. So, I’ll have this website up for your readers as well. And what we see over here is Geoffrey Kahn’s book. It’s a giant two-volume book, you can download it for free. It’s OpenBook Publishers, which is fascinating. It’s a new world; people are publishing so that people can read, not necessarily to make a buck. And so, over here you can download it. And what I have for you here is… you see, I’ve downloaded it, and you can just go right through it. This is something like 700 pages.

And the coolest thing, though, the most amazing thing about this was, that after telling you for 700 pages what Biblical Hebrew should sound like, he went and he got what I believe was a graduate student named Alex Foreman, and Alex Foreman is, from the brief bio on the website, he’s able to converse in many Semitic languages; Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, the big ones, all the things that you need. And over here what he has is, he’s going to read Genesis 1, Genesis… and Psalm 1, according to the pronunciation of the Masoretes. So, should we play it? You want to do it?

Nehemia: Let’s play it, but before we play it though… We had Geoffrey Kahn on the program, and one of the things that he says is… or let me ask you, because I’m interviewing you rather than saying things. So, is it that Aaron Ben Asher just made up this whole system? Well, what are you saying? In other words, if we want to know what the… So, you said it’s like this lightning rod. It all went through one man.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: And I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. I definitely used to think that as well, because then you also have Ben Naphtali as well, who is the rival. And Ben Asher was a school or a family. So, are you saying that the Masoretes just made this whole system up? They said, “Hmm, how should we pronounce the letters Bet, Resh, Alef, Shin, Yud, Tav? Maybe it’s bara’ashit, or maybe it’s buru’ushit,” and they just decided arbitrarily bereshit? What are you saying? What’s your view of how this happened?

David: So, I actually would like to hear what Jeffrey said, because I’m not the expert on this, but this is a common question. To me, it’s very clear that something new is happening here. It’s very clear we have all these new vowels, and so there definitely is something new. But the thing is, Hebrew was pronounced before the vowels were written, so there’s also a continuation going on, just putting in writing what was already there. So, in a certain sense, by definition, it has to be both. There’s a great continuation, but there’s also an aspect of something new. That’s how I see it.

Nehemia: If I remember correctly, what he said was that… and there’s different variations of this among different scholars, so I don’t know that this is him per se… in fact, I’m sure it’s him, because I remember when he told it to me. So, his idea is that they’re recording a pronunciation tradition. Meaning, you have these people who memorize the entire Bible. Maybe they don’t even know what it means, and they’re referred to in the Talmud as these readers.

David: Yes.

Nehemia: And so, you would go, and you’d say, “Okay, what does it say in the first section of Exodus?” And they’d recite it to you, maybe even without understanding what it meant, but they had memorized it. And what the Masoretes did is, they found a way of graphically representing that in writing.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: Meaning, if that guy dies, and he hasn’t taught it to the next guy, well then what happens? Well, we would lose it. So, they wrote down a reading tradition, which I believe Khan says goes back to the Second Temple period, at least.

David: Right.

Nehemia: What it was before that, I’m not sure he says. But in other words, you had people who were in the Second Temple Period who were memorizing it, teaching it father to son, rabbi to disciple, and eventually they’re like, “This isn’t a great system. We should be able to write this down, and there are other systems to write it down, to write down languages that have been developed by the Syriac-speaking Christians, and we should adapt one of those systems, and we should do something similar. Why can’t we do what they did and write it down as well?”

David: Right.

Nehemia: So, in other words, it’s not that Ben Asher just pulled us out of thin air, it’s that he was maybe the end of a long line of people who were finding ways to record it. And one of the mysteries we have is that we have the Tiberian system, the full-blown system. We don’t really see much of a gradual evolution, so we’re missing pieces of the puzzle.

David: We’re missing pieces, yeah. When you say we’re missing pieces, we have the Dead Sea Scrolls from a thousand years before, where we have a ton of text right there. But we don’t have a lot, necessarily, in between for biblical texts. So, you have the Judean Desert, and then…

Nehemia: They call it the Great Silent Period, between the end of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the earliest Masoretic manuscripts.

David: Yeah. So, this is the amazing thing; when somebody says, “What does Hebrew sound like? How should I pronounce it?” What we have is something very different here. This is something that I’ve never heard before. It’s like a recipe, putting all these different bits and pieces together to get something new. So, why don’t we take a look?

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: Nehemia, maybe we should read Genesis 1:1, the first verse, just to hear it, and then we’ll read it there. So, could you do it for us?

Nehemia: Let’s have you do it. People have heard me do this a hundred times.

David: Alright, so we’ve heard Nehemia. “Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz.” And for now, let’s just focus on the last vowel sound, “ha’aretz”. So, that means, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There’s another way to translate this, not for now, the “et ha’aretz”, “and the earth”, and that sound is almost like the “tz” in pizza, aretz, pizza, aretz.

Nehemia: By the way, the way you just read it is not the Israeli pronunciation. What is the pronunciation system? How would you describe it?

David: I would say it’s influenced by modern Israeli, but not necessarily completely Sephardi. Meaning, I still have Ashkenazi, Eastern European pronunciations for the kamatz, b’ara, instead of ba’ra. And so, I still keep some of the pieces of my youth, so to speak.

But when I’m in a synagogue, in my own synagogue… not that I’m the rabbi of the synagogue, but when I’m in synagogue and reading, this is how I would read this differently as an Ashkenazi.

Nehemia: Oh, so read it how you would read it in synagogue.

David: “Bereshis bara Elohim es ha’shamayim v’es ha’aretz.”

Nehemia: Okay, that’s how I was taught to read it as well. And by the way, you also have here the distinguishing between segol and tzere. In Israeli Hebrew, there’s no distinguishing between “eh” and “ay”, even though these symbols represent two different sounds. Meaning, the symbols in the biblical text, the Tiberian system. But the Sephardic system, which was adopted in Israel, just has “eh”.

David: Right. Are you ready?

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: Here it is, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Let’s hear it.

David: We are stepping in a time machine back to the city of Tiberias in the year 930.

“Bareshith boro Elohim eth hashomayim v’eth ha’ores.”

Were you able to hear that?

Nehemia: I was. Let’s hear that again.

David: Okay. And I’ll try to show you the…

Nehemia: Yeah, if you can show it to us…

David: I think it was a little bit loud, let me turn down the volume.

“Bareshis boro Elohim eth hashomayim v’eth ha’ores.”

Okay, the first thing… so, what do you notice there, Nehemia?

Nehemia: So, it’s much closer to the traditional Ashkenazic pronunciation than anything you would normally hear in Israel.

David: Right. This isn’t the “ta, ta, ta, ta.” “Ta” is a “tha” here, “bareshi-th”.

Nehemia: Right.

David: So, the Ashkenazic does pretty well here. And then also, like when we said, “ha’aretz”, instead of that “pizza” sound, “tz-tz-tz”, it was “ve’et ha’ares”

Nehemia: So, it’s the Arabic’s fault…

David: “Bareshis boro Elohim eth hashomayim v’eth ha’ores.”

Nehemia: So, it’s not exactly Ashkenazi, but it’s much closer than the modern Israeli pronunciation. It’s very interesting.

David: Yeah. So, it’s now “sa, sa, sa,” like traditional Ashkenazi, but still the Tav, with and without a dagesh, which means this is a “tha” instead of a “ta.” And then we’re also going to have the kamatz versus the patach; the “oh” versus the “ah” is an Ashkenazi feature. And then we’re also going to see the Vav. This Vav has launched like 10 wars online.

Nehemia: Wait, so before you get to that, we’re going to talk about the Vav. We’ll do that in part two, because people love the Vav. That’s a topic my audience is interested in. I’ve done a bunch of programs on the ancient pronunciation of Vav, and I will, on a regular basis, get comments from people saying, “Nehemia, I thought you knew Hebrew. How can you be so stupid and know that it’s not ‘wow’?”

But what is interesting in this pronunciation… and let’s just be clear, what Geoffrey Kahn’s project is attempting to do is, if you went back to the 10th century… and we have references to this. I talked about it in the program with him, that there were people who said, “We should all learn from the Tiberians, because they have the most proper Hebrew. When we make mistakes here in Iraq and in Babylon, it’s because our Hebrew is inferior and the correct one’s in Tiberias.” Which is really interesting, because linguists would generally say that there’s different dialects and different forms of a language, and it’s not that one is superior to the other. So, they had a bit of an inferiority complex in the 10th century. But they said things like, “Go find yourself a Tiberian teacher.” And then they wrote manuals of how to read Tiberian Hebrew, even for people who didn’t read it that way.

And so, what he’s done is, taken those manuals, translated them, and now tried to reconstruct… One of the things, for example, Saadia Gaon famously says is, “The Hebrew alphabet is almost the same as the Arabic in pronunciation, except for this small numbers of letters.” And for example, the letter Tzadi he doesn’t mention as being different. So therefore, your conclusion is: okay, Saadia Gaon pronounced “tzoh” and not “tzuh”, which maybe you can’t hear the difference. Like, literally, my microphone might not be sensitive enough to pick up the difference. “Tzoh” and “tzuh” is very similar, but the Tiberians, apparently… or Saadia Gaon, at least, pronounced it “tzoh.” And that’s what they’re doing here.

David: No, you’re definitely right, Nehemia. So, people come at you, and they ask you these questions, “Didn’t you hear this?” “Didn’t you know that?” And when it comes to Hebrew, that’s why I think Geoffrey Kahn and his… I think we can call it a school by now, there’s a whole group.

Nehemia: The Cambridge School, yeah.

David: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s astounding.

David: Yeah. But honestly, normally, when you say a school, it’s because you want to disagree with them. You know, like, “Oh, the Copenhagen School!” Or “Oh, the Harvard School! We don’t follow those people.” Obviously, I’m saying this out of respect. I think he’s really started a whole movement here. And why would we believe Geoffrey Kahn more than the people on YouTube commenting that you pronounced it wrong? “It’s clearly ‘tzoh’ and ‘tzuh’.” It’s clearly like “pizza”, and a regular S.

Nehemia: Well, it’s not exactly a regular S, it’s the Arabic “Sa” which is…

David: A “S”.

Nehemia: I may not even be doing it correctly. So, alright, I want to get to the Vav, so let’s wrap up this part of the program.

David: Okay, but I’ll say one other thing. So, here’s the evidence. How do you know? There were people interested in this topic a thousand years ago.

Nehemia: Right.

David: And this was before Galileo, and before Isaac Newton. We’re talking centuries before, people cared about this. And there’s this one story about… I forgot what his specific name was, but he was a Nazir, a Nazirite, and this Nazir said, “I went on a trip. And I went to Tiberias, and I sat in the square.” And he was essentially doing field work like a sociologist would today with a recorder, and he was basically saying, “I wanted to hear how these Tiberians, how they pronounce the letter Resh, ‘rah’”. And this is the next letter that people kill each other over, the Resh. Is it a rolling Resh? Do you know how to do a rolling Resh?

Nehemia: I am not capable of pronouncing it, no.

David: Right. So, neither am I!

Nehemia: So, it’s interesting. English has a very unique R, which only exists in two languages that I’m aware of, English and Northeastern Chinese. And as a native English speaker, it’s very difficult to pronounce other forms of the letter R.

David: I know you’ve been to China, so, you spent a great deal of time there. But listen, so this guy, the Nazirite, in the year 1000, goes to Tiberias, sits down and listens. And you know what he says? “They’re pronouncing the Resh three different ways,” and this is the evidence that Khan is looking at, these kinds of treatises that say, “There’s three ways to pronounce Resh. This is how you do the vowel.” We’ll get to the vowel eventually, but here, if we go one more time, let’s just, I think it would be helpful to just…

Nehemia: Yeah. Who you’re citing there, his name is Eli ben Yehuda HaNazir, Eli ben Judah the Nazirite. So, what’s important about what he’s saying is that it wasn’t just that Ben Asher sat down and invented a dialect of Hebrew, this was a dialect that had some living continuation. And you could debate whether it was Aramaic…

David: Right.

Nehemia: But there was some living form of the language, of the pronunciation of the language, in Tiberias in the 10th century.

David: A hundred percent. So, let’s do this one more time, Nehemia. The first verse of the Bible. You ready?

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: So, this is me. I’m going to try and do modern Hebrew, which is the most common way this is pronounced.

Nehemia: Yeah.

David: “Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz.” Actually, on Accordance, we can play it for you. Why don’t I pull up Accordance?

Nehemia: Please do that.

David: Let’s do the reference tools, commentaries. Everybody, Accordance, if you want to study Hebrew Bible, this is the program for you. I do not get a cut. This is unpromoted, unpaid. But you’re going to get to hear it here. Let’s hear Genesis 1:1

“Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz.”

One more time.

“Bereshit bara Elohim et ha’shamayim v’et ha’aretz.”

All right, and now we’re going to go back…

Nehemia: And one of the things you’ll hear, if you’re familiar with these things, is there’s no difference between what you had as an “oh” and an “ah”, the kamatz and the patach, even though what we’re about to hear from the person who’s trying to reproduce the Tiberian, he does distinguish those two vowels. Okay, go ahead.

David: Okay, here we go, time machine, we’re going back.

“Bareshis boro Elohim eth hashomayim v’eth ha’ores.”

Nehemia: Alright. So, in the next part we’re going to come right back, and we’ll do another program, and we want to hear about the Vav. So, alright.

David: Alright, one more time. Check out the Biblical Culture YouTube channel. I’d love to see you there and hear your comments. Nehemia, a lot of people in the comments say, “I found you from NehemiasWall,” so it’s fantastic. And if you’re interested in studying biblical Hebrew, let us know quickly at the Jewish Theological Seminary, because like I said, right now all of our classes are full. It would have to be down the road.

Nehemia: Wonderful. Thanks so much, David.

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!

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BOOKS MENTIONED
The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume 1
by Geoffrey Khan

RELATED EPISODES
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Hebrew Voices #157 – SBL Reactions 2022: Part 1
Support Team Study – SBL Reactions 2022: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Biblical Hebrew at JTS
Capstone  Project at JTS
The Institute of Biblical Culture

The post Hebrew Voices #209 – Read Like a Tiberian Jew: Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

Watch the SNEAK PEEK of Revelation or Imagination: Part 4, where Nehemia learns from Book of Mormon expert Royal Skousen about scribal errors on the golden plates, the need for scholars to correct corrupted texts, and what this can teach us about other historical texts.

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The post Support Team Study SNEAK PEEK! Revelation or Imagination: Part 4 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #207 - Sounds like Freedom, Nehemia speaks to Deborah Henne on her "Sounds like Freedom" program on the Name of God and truth vs. experience.

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Hebrew Voices #207 – Nehemia on “Sounds like Freedom”

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

Deborah: Welcome back to the Sounds Like Freedom podcast. I’m your host, Deborah Henne, and I’m here today with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, who is the creator and host of the Hebrew Voices podcast. He has written two popular books on the Hebrew origins of Christianity and is active in interfaith dialogue. Dr. Gordon earned his PhD from Bar Ilan University in biblical studies, writing his doctoral dissertation on The Writing, Erasure, and Correction of the Tetragrammaton in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts. He also holds a master’s degree in biblical studies and a bachelor’s degree in archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has worked as a translator on the Dead Sea Scrolls and a researcher deciphering ancient Hebrew manuscripts. He is currently working on cutting edge research utilizing Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible.

Welcome, Dr. Nehemia.

Nehemia: Hey, thank you. Shalom.

Deborah: Shalom to you as well. Now, I am a huge fan of your work. I’ve used some of your research and materials in some messages that I’ve preached. I’m a huge fan of your research and what you bring to the Hebrew word studies and the Hebrew origins of the Christian faith. In particular, I was actually introduced to you and your work through my cousin, who sent me your video about Yahweh and the origins of Yahweh. So, what I would love is for my listeners to hear what you discovered about the origins of Yahweh and the name of God.

Nehemia: So, Yahweh is… the Anchor Bible Dictionary puts it best; it calls Yahweh a scholarly guess. In other words… let’s back up. We have this challenge, which is that Rabbinical Judaism forbade Jews from pronouncing the name of God, which was written 6,827 times in the most accurate manuscripts. And it’s written with the consonants, but it’s not pronounced. So, the assumption is, we don’t know what the vowels are.

So, imagine if you had my letters N-H-M, and you didn’t know if it was Nuhumu or if it was Nihimi. And that’s because Hebrew has two different sets of writing; it has the consonants and the vowels which are written separately, and it’s generally believed that the vowels originally weren’t even written. Even today, if you go to a synagogue and you pull out the Torah scroll, it doesn’t have any vowels written. That is, it’s just the consonants.

So, where do you get the vowels from? Well, you go to a printed book, and you see what the vowels are, and you read it over and over until you know it. And then you go back and read the unvocalized text. That’s, in practice, how it’s done today when somebody reads in the public liturgy, in the prayers in the synagogue. Now, you can pick it up if you’re fluent in Hebrew and read it without even practicing, and you’ll get probably 90-95% of it right. You might make some mistakes, but maybe 98% you’ll get right.

So, the problem is, what are the vowels of God’s name? We know it’s Y-H-V, and then the last one is H, which is usually silent at the end of a word. Okay, so how do we pronounce that? The scholarly guess is that it’s Yahweh, and that’s based on a number of pieces of evidence. One of those is that there is a church father named Theodoret of Cyrus. For years I mispronounced his name, and then I met an expert in what they call the church fathers, and he says, “No, that’s ‘Thee-odd-urret.’” I always called him “Theodore-et” because I didn’t know how it’s pronounced. At least in English, they say “Thee-odd-urret.”

So, anyway, Theodoret says… he’s speaking about the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God, which is in Hebrew Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and he says that the Jews pronounce it Ayah, and the Samaritans pronounce it Yahveh. And scholars see that, and they say, “Oh, Yahveh. Well, the Jews don’t know how to pronounce it. Theodoret’s in the 5th century,” this is the assumption, “but he does say the Jews pronounce it Ayah. So, what is Ayah?” There’s a bunch of theories about it; we won’t go into that. But they say, “Yahveh, that’s Yahweh.” All right, that’s piece of evidence number one.

Then you have a church father named Clement, and he says… and he’s earlier than Theodoret. He’s like the 2nd century, and he says that the Tetragrammaton is Yah’u’eh. And so, they take those two and they say, “All right, what would that be in Hebrew? Yahveh isn’t a Hebrew word, and Yah’u’eh isn’t a Hebrew word.” So, they reconstruct that it’s Yahweh. That’s what they say today. They’ll say, “That’s the evidence. That’s the standard explanation. We have the Samaritan evidence from Theodoret, and Clement tells us…”

Alright. Now, first of all, they ignore a bunch of other church fathers who say that it’s Yah’oh, and actually the only Jewish piece of evidence has Yah’oh. Okay, well, Yah’oh isn’t a Hebrew name either. It’s not a Hebrew word. And part of that is because there’s a letter Hey, and Hey isn’t pronounced in ancient Greek, so the Hey automatically drops. So Yah’oh is something like Yeho- something. Something’s missing there.

So, if you look back at where they came up with Yahweh from, one of the great promoters of Yahweh was this really great scholar, a man named Gesenius. Gesenius was this German, who, in the early 19th century, around the 1820’s, he created what later becomes the definitive grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Also, the definitive lexicon of Biblical Hebrew. So, the lexicon that we used at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, where most of the students are… I’m from Chicago, but most of the students are native Hebrew speakers. The lexicon we used was based on Gesenius’ lexicon, in German, translated into English. They used the English translation, and it had gone through many different modifications, but basically it was based on Gesenius’ lexicon. So, he was a great scholar. I don’t dispute that.

In one of the versions of his lexicon, he gives the Clement argument of Yah’u’eh, and he gives Yahveh, and then he gives some other pieces of evidence. But he says, “Well, there must be some connection,” I’m paraphrasing here. But he basically says, “There must be some connection. You have all these ancient peoples in the Mediterranean, and they’re all in the same area. And if you go back to the earliest period, they’re all probably one big tribe.” And that was something they had come to through linguistics. They realized most of the European languages, and there are some exceptions like Hungarian and Estonian, but almost all the European languages are part of a single family of languages called Indo-European languages. And so, the assumption was, which is probably correct, they all go back to a single tribe thousands of years ago. I would say just after the flood, but they would probably say a different event, and they all spoke one language, and they all had a single god. And so, if you have a certain god from among the ancient Germans, and a different god among the ancient Latins, it must all be the same god.

And then they said, “Well, in the Mediterranean, you also have the Egyptians,” who today we wouldn’t say speak an Indo-European language. But they’re all part, maybe, of the same Mediterranean culture, and they must have had a god which was the equivalent of Jupiter. Why Jupiter? Because Jupiter was the main god of the ancient Latins, of the Latin language of the Romans. Okay, well, Jupiter actually means father. Pater is father. It’s literally the same word as father, because English is also an Indo-European language.

And then Yah’oh is actually Yahweh-pater; that’s actually where you get “Jupiter”. So, one of the forms of Jupiter is Yahweh. So, Gesenius says like this: “They all came from this ancient Mediterranean culture, and the Israelites, the Hebrews, must have gotten the name of Yahweh, the name of their god, from the Egyptians, which had the same god as the Latins, as the Romans. And therefore, the pronunciation is Yahweh, just like it is in Latin.” The young people say TLDR; too long, didn’t read.

So, the TLDR is, the Hebrews got the name of their god from the Egyptians, because they were slaves in Egypt, who had the same god as Yahweh-pater, which is Jupiter. So, he’s reconstructing the pronunciation of the Hebrew name of God, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, from Latin. And in ancient Latin, it was Yahweh.

Now, he then puts that together with Clement, and he puts that together with Theodoret, and he says, “Okay, there you go. It’s Yahweh.” Now later, he drops that, because he’s like, “Wait a minute. That’s not going to convince a lot of Christians that the name of their god, as it is in the Old Testament, comes from Jupiter.” So, he drops that. But you can see his pattern of thought there, right? It has to be something that’s common to all the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, and in Latin, we have Yahweh. Well, Yahweh stuck, but like I said, even in the late 20th century they’re calling it a scholarly guess.

So, my prayer was, I want to do better than a scholarly guess. There are actually a lot of scholarly guesses. I read all these very learned academic articles, where they say maybe it was originally Yah-vo, or Yah-wo. That’s based on the pattern of the name Pharaoh. That’s an example. Actually, Gesenius mentions that as a possibility that he rejects as well.

So, there’s all these different theories. And what they do is, they look at other Hebrew names, and they say, “Okay, what are patterns for names?” And that’s like the example of Pharaoh. Or they say, “Well, what does it mean?” And the real reason Yahweh stuck wasn’t because of Jupiter. The reason Yahweh stuck is because…

So, most Bible scholars come from, let’s say in America in particular, and in Germany even more so, historically at least, came from the field of theology. And in theology, they ask the question, “Okay, what is God? God’s a creator. So, whatever Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is, however you pronounce it, it must mean creator.” Alright, well, how can we get those letters to mean creator? And they say, “Well, Hebrew has seven conjugations,” which is correct. They’re verbal conjugations. In English, if you want to change the meaning of a verb, you add words to it. I drink. I was drinking coffee. The coffee was drunk by Nehemia, who was thirsty. So, we have drink, drink, drink, was drunk, is to be drunk, is to be drinking? I don’t know, English isn’t my expertise. So, that’s what you do in Indo-European languages; you do that in English.

In Semitic languages, you have these verbal conjugations, so you change the vowels. That’s what you do. You add prefixes and suffixes and infixes; you do all kinds of things. You keep the three basic letters of the verb… sometimes some of them drop, but you keep the three basic letters of the verb. And then you add prefixes and suffixes and infixes, and you modify the vowels. Mainly you change the vowels.

I could take the same three Hebrew letters and make completely different words in English. But in Hebrew, it’s the same letters. So, I have shavar, “he broke”, shiber, “he smashed”, and shubar, “it was smashed”. And I didn’t change the three letters. It’s literally the same three Hebrew letters. All I did was change the little dots and points, and the vuh changed to a buh based on a little dot I added to it. That’s how Hebrew works.

So, they said, “Okay, how can we get Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey to mean ‘He’s the creator’?” Well, there’s one of the conjugations, called hifil, and it has a causative meaning. So, hishbir could theoretically… it doesn’t, but it could, theoretically mean “he causes to break”. It actually means “he exchanges in trade”, but whatever. So, they say, “Alright, Yahweh, or Yah’veh in more standard Hebrew pronunciation, would mean ‘He that causes to be.’” And there we go, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, based on our philosophy, means “He’s the creator”. And that must be the original meaning.

Well, there’s one problem; that, in the entire history of the Hebrew language, the word Yah’veh, or any form of hifil, of that particular root, doesn’t exist. There’s actually one exception, but it’s not with a vuh. It’s complicated. But basically, it’s a made-up word in a poem from the 10th century. But other than that, it doesn’t exist in Hebrew.

And so, you have these seven conjugations, but not every root exists in all seven conjugations. And the root of the word “to be” doesn’t exist in that form, it’s just a made-up form. It was literally made up by scholars. So, it’s funny, because they’ll say Yehovah, which is what I found the vowels to be, and we can get to that if we have time. “Yehovah is,” scholars will say, “well, it’s an impossible hybrid form.” Okay. Why is it impossible? It’s only impossible if you say it’s a verb, a single form of a single verb, which it’s not. Nobody says that. Whereas Yah’veh is a single form of a verb, but it’s a made-up form. It’s an impossible form. I guess it’s not impossible, it’s just made up.

In other words, if you look throughout the entire history of the Hebrew language, you don’t find the form Yah’veh. You just don’t find it. So, how do we know it is that? Well, we just made it up. So, could it be? Sure, anything’s possible. It could be Yuhuvuhuh. If we don’t know what the vowels are, the vowels could be anything. They could be anything within the Hebrew vowel patterns, Hebrew consonant and vowel patterns.

What I say, my prayer was, I want to see this in one of the manuscripts. Where is a manuscript of the… Look, how do we have the Bible at all? There were scribes, Jewish scribes, who faithfully copied and transcribed the Bible over many generations. Where did they ever record it to be Yahweh or Yah’veh? They didn’t. So, that was my prayer. I wanted to see how it’s recorded.

So, here’s the problem. It’s recorded in the Hebrew manuscripts, in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts with vowels, with one of the vowels missing. And what I found is that sometimes that missing vowel isn’t missing, it’s included. In the most important manuscript of the Bible in Hebrew, the Aleppo Codex, it’s between six and eight times. Two of them, I think, are later additions. But it’s six times, originally. And some manuscripts, I later found, like, for example, the Damascus Crown, which is from the 10th century, it’s one of the key manuscripts of the Bible in Hebrew, in most places has that missing vowel not missing. It’s included in almost every place, which seems kind of important. And that makes the name Yehovah. Which actually, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense, because we have Hebrew names that are called theophoric names, and those are names which have God’s name in them.

Like my name, Nehemia, is “Yehovah comforts”. Well, why isn’t it Nehem’yeho? Why is it Nehemia? Or if you think about Netanyahu. Nehemia is actually short for Nehemya-hu, just like Netanya-hu. So, at the end of a name, it’s always Yahu, but at the beginning of a name, it’s always Yeho. And there are linguistic reasons for that I could go into if you want, but they’re a bit complicated. It has to do with the shortening of vowels when they’re distant from the place of the emphasized syllable. So, Yahu becomes Yeho when it’s at the beginning of a name.

So, the name Netanyahu is actually the same name as Yehonatan, or Jonathan. What do I mean it’s the same name? It means the same thing. Netanyahu means “Yehovah gives”, and Yehonatan means “Yehovah gives”. It’s just the word “give” and the word “Yehovah.” One’s at the beginning and one’s at the end, and then they switch. And then you get Yehonatan, which becomes Netanyahu. So, it’s always Yeho at the beginning of a name. And that’s because it’s distant from the place of the emphasized syllable, so the vowel is shortened.

In God’s name, it would not be Yahu, Yahuvah, that’s not how it would be. It would be Yehovah… that first syllable would shorten, basically. Or you could say it would elongate in the emphasized position. It’s just six of one, half a dozen of the other. So, long story… TLDR is, from the Hebrew manuscripts, as far as I can tell, it’s Yehovah. And I later found numerous rabbis say it’s Yehovah.

One of the things I was taught as a fact, which was common knowledge, is the Jews didn’t remember how to pronounce the name, and no Jewish source ever gives a pronunciation of the name. Well, I knew that wasn’t true, but what I didn’t know is there’s numerous rabbis who say it’s Yehovah. And then they refer to it as a secret, which is very interesting. Why is it a secret? Because the rabbis said it’s forbidden to pronounce, and it can only be transmitted by rabbi to disciple once every seven years. So, it was literally the secret that was transmitted from rabbi to disciple, according to what they’re saying. I don’t know if it was literally every seven years, but at some point, the rabbi would apparently reveal it to his disciple. And we have these interesting ceremonies how they did it… Anyway, go ahead, yeah.

Deborah: That’s amazing! The journey of uncovering the name of God. And so, I imagine, going against common culture, you got a little bit of pushback as you wrote books on this. I know you worked with Keith Johnson on this project, and it took years of study, from what I understand.

Nehemia: Just replace the word “a little bit” with “a lot of”!

Deborah: Yeah! Okay.

Nehemia: It’s quite funny. I get two types of pushback. Well, I get more than two. This morning, I got an email from someone who said, “I can’t believe you’re so stupid. Don’t you know, there’s no V in ancient Hebrew?” So, yeah, I’ve got that little PhD thing, but what do I know? I know there’s people who say there’s no V in ancient Hebrew. I don’t know that there was no V in ancient Hebrew, there’s a difference.

So, one of the types of pushbacks I get is, “Well, no, those are the vowels of Adonai, which is the Hebrew for Lord.” That’s the common pushback I’ll get from scholars. And then from the non-scholars, the pushback I’ll get is, “Nehemia, you’re deceiving people. You’re saying you discovered something, but everybody knows that’s the pronunciation of the name.” Okay, great! I didn’t discover anything new, I’m just stating the obvious. Wonderful. I don’t think I’m deceiving people, but because all the scholars tell me that it’s an impossible hybrid, and those are the vowels of Adonai, even though Adonai has an “ah” in it, not an “eh”, but okay.

So, it’s funny. I get the two opposite criticisms. One is “What you’re saying couldn’t possibly be correct.” And the other, usually from Jews who are academics, will say, “This isn’t a discovery, this is obvious. Why are you pretending you discovered something?” So…

Deborah: Yeah. So, this show is about living in the freedom of God. So, when these things come against you, I would imagine, maybe it’s just me being a female, but it can hurt, and be like, “I am dedicating years into this and money into this, and I’m doing my best work to share this powerful truth, because there’s power in the name of God.” There’s power in the name of God.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Deborah: So, what strategies do you use to overcome that and to stand strong in that place?

Nehemia: So, the one-word answer is autism. So, you’re saying it’s because you’re a female, and I have what’s called Asperger’s, which has been described as an extreme expression of the male mind. And this isn’t me saying it, psychologists say that. Women are very intuitive, and what they really mean by that is… usually male psychologists will say this; there are things that women just pick up on that men don’t pick up on just intuitively, naturally. I don’t know why, it’s how God created us. And autism is an extreme expression of the male mind that, if my beautiful wife is upset with me, she knows she needs to tell me that because I would never know in a million years, unless she tells me. She’s like… well, not she, but let’s say in previous situations, I had women say, “Can’t you tell I’m upset?” No, I have no idea. You have some sixth sense I just don’t have. That’s not how God created me.

Now, I can use my intellect to try to infer, and I’ll be right maybe 60% of the time. But the other 40%, “Maybe she just has a stomachache, and I think she’s upset with me.” So, I just don’t even try anymore. That’s the beautiful relationship we have. She’ll tell me if she’s upset with me.

So, one of the characteristics of Asperger’s… and I openly admit this… and they say that Einstein had this… not that I’m Einstein, but it’s a characteristic of Asperger’s, is that you kind of don’t care what anybody thinks. You do to some extent, but not the way most people do. So, if you know that you’re right about something, you kind of don’t care that everybody thinks you’re wrong. Einstein famously knew, and we would say he believed, but in his mind, he knew he was right about the theory of relativity. And they went to test his experiment with a certain observation of an eclipse and where the stars were, something like this, and they took a photo, and it proved him wrong. And he said, “No, I’m right. Redo the experiment.” And they redid the experiment, and he was proven right. He published this in 1905, and I believe it was something like 1919 until he was proven right. So, think about that. For 14 years there were people who were saying, “He’s an idiot. He’s crazy. He’s making this up. He’s a fool. He just doesn’t understand Newtonian physics, and we’ve proven him wrong.” And then he said, “Well, you did the experiment wrong.” And they redid the experiment 14 years later. I don’t remember the exact year, something like that, and he was proven right. And now today it’s just a given that he’s right.

Deborah: … a thread that we can pull out. Like, you’re going to Scripture. You’re doing your due diligence. You’re studying. You’re researching. And you have a belief in the truth that you’re finding in Scripture, and you’re standing on that. And I think that principle can still be applied across the board.

Nehemia: Oh, for sure.

Deborah: … it was different, like me…

Nehemia: I would say, and of course this is maybe a bit biased, but I would say everyone should have a little bit of Asperger’s and not be concerned with what other people think. The woke people have this expression, mansplaining, and what they really mean is that, when you explain something to someone in a way that’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? Is it demeaning? Condescending! That’s the word. When you explain something to people in a way that’s condescending… and I have people all the time, men and women, who explain to me in a condescending way, “Oh, don’t you know? There’s no V in Hebrew. I read that in Wikipedia. How can Nehemia not know this?” Okay. Well, I happen to know probably more than you do about Hebrew, that’s my expertise. Fine.

But I think everybody should have a little bit of autism in the sense that, who cares what everybody else thinks? You shouldn’t care. People are going to condescendingly explain things to you, and they’re going to be wrong. And boy, we’ve seen that a lot in the mainstream culture in the last few years, where people…

Let’s just take something… I don’t know if we want to get banned here, but I’ll take something that isn’t controversial, the masks. “Don’t use masks, they don’t work.” “Oh, we were lying because we wanted the doctors to have masks.” “If you don’t use masks, you’re killing old people.” “It turns out the masks really don’t help, and they don’t work.” And that whole progression is all from mainstream wisdom. I’m not talking about conspiracy theorists. The mainstream authorities said every one of those statements. I may be paraphrasing, but basically, they were saying, originally, “Don’t wear masks, they don’t work.” And they later admitted, “Well, it was a noble lie, because we wanted the first responders to have the masks, and there weren’t enough.” And “You better use a mask, or the old people will die and you’re killing people.” I used to hear that all the time. And then, “The mask didn’t actually prevent the spread.”

So, you’re being explained something in a condescending way that may or may not be true, and you should stick with what, in your gut, in your heart, you know to be the truth based on the best evidence you’ve seen. Now, if you see better evidence, you should change. You say, “Well, you’ve invested years in this and a lot of money,” and all that’s true. But if I found I was wrong, in a minute I would change, because I want the truth. That’s all I’m after is the truth.

Here’s what I say: I don’t have a recording of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush and saying, “This is My name forever.” I don’t have that. What I have is transcriptions that were transmitted for many generations by scribes. Are those the exact words that God spoke to Moses? I can say I believe that, but that’s a theological belief. It’s not based on, let’s say, empirical evidence and fact that I can prove. Based on the empirical evidence and the facts I can prove, to the best of my knowledge, His name is Yehovah and not Yahweh. Could it be Yahweh? Sure. It could be Yuhuvuhu, it could be anything. All I could do is stick with the best evidence I have.

And I think the one takeaway that’s important for everybody is, if you have this deep conviction in your heart based on reading Scripture that something is true, don’t let the experts tell you, “You’re killing old people if you believe that,” like with the masks, or, “that scripture doesn’t work, don’t bother putting it on your face,” and, “do put it on your face or you’ll harm people.” Don’t listen to the experts. You can hear what the experts have to say, but do they know what they’re talking about? They might know what they’re talking about, and it’s a noble lie because they have some other agenda.

And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case in biblical studies, but I hear experts all the time saying, “Well, we know that X, Y, and Z is true.” And what they really mean is, “My friends and I have come to a consensus among ourselves that all of that evidence you’re citing isn’t important and it’s not valid, but this other evidence that we focus on is important and valid.” Well, who cares what you and your friends decided? Fifty years from now, you and your friends won’t be around, and some other group of people will have some other consensus.

There’s this expression that I hear in the media, more in the alternative media, which is “Don’t believe your lying eyes.” You won’t hear that in the mainstream media. I won’t give examples, but people know what I’m talking about. So, it’s things you can see with your own eyes, and they use this term “gaslighting”, which, I like that term if it’s used correctly. What gaslighting really means… it was originally a play and later two different movies. And the plot was, there’s this woman who is very wealthy, and her husband is trying to get her committed to a mental institution so he can steal all of her wealth. And I don’t remember exactly, but he’s pulling some kind of prank on her, like, he has some thing that he hides, and he accuses her of stealing it. She’s like, “I didn’t steal it.”

And he goes, and he says, “Well, unlock your little cupboard,” or whatever. And she unlocks the cupboard, and it’s hidden there. And he says, “You don’t remember.” So, what he’s doing is changing reality on her. And it’s called gaslighting because he’s sneaking into the other apartment and messing with the lights, or it causes the lights to flicker, and she sees the lights flickering. And she’s like, “something’s going on.” And he tells her, “No, you’re just imagining that. The lights are not flickering.” And the lights were gas-powered back then, actually butane, or gas, or whatever.

So, people are doing this around us all the time. They’re gaslighting us. They’re telling us, “You saw something happening, but it didn’t really happen.” “You were wearing a mask, and you got that disease. No, no, it was because you didn’t wear the mask right. The masks work, they work. We said they work. You just didn’t wear it right. You weren’t really wearing it…” And you’re like, “I know I was wearing it… what?”

So, they’re gaslighting us in biblical studies as well. They’re gaslighting us in Judaism. They’re gaslighting us in Christianity. We can see things with our own eyes. We can feel them in our heart, and they’re telling us they’re not so. Maybe they are so.

Deborah: … in everyday life, our own lives that we can believe based on life experiences when I can gaslight reality and it can hold us captive in that bondage. But if we go back to Scripture, and we find the truth, and we cling to that truth, and cleave to that truth, we can live in freedom. And just bridging that scholarship to life, take feedback and evidence for growth, but always take it back to Scripture, and standing in the truth of Scripture. And one more thing I kind of wanted to talk about…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Deborah: Proverbs 31, and we were talking about marriage, relationships, husbands and wives. And so, in the Christian faith, most men, most fathers, will take their sons and say, “This is the woman you want to marry.” And every single female, or every single one I’ve ever talked to, and as a woman raised in a Christian home, I read that and I think, “I can never do it!” And we beat ourselves up. But one day, I read a book, and in it, the author…

Nehemia: Are you talking about the Woman of Valor?

Deborah: Yes!

Nehemia: And Proverbs 31?

Deborah: Yes, Proverbs 31. And in it, the author befriended a Jewish couple, and the Jewish woman was telling the Christian woman, “You got it all wrong. You’re using this to beat yourself up, and beat up every Christian woman, that they can never reach this ideal. But that isn’t how we, as Jews, read this poem.” So, I guess… I know this is not really scripted or planned, but as somebody who was raised and is Jewish, when you read that, what’s the filter for that? I’d love to hear a Jewish perspective.

Nehemia: So, here I’m at a bit of a disadvantage, because I don’t know what the Christian perspective is. So, I’ll just start from scratch.

Deborah: Okay.

Nehemia: So, Proverbs 31 verse 10, is “the Woman of Valor”, it’s usually translated as. That’s the translation I’ve heard. In Hebrew, it’s Eshet Chayil. And I have an interesting story about that. So, for years, my prayer to God was, give me the eshet chayil, put me together with the eshet chayil. And I met my wife, and we got engaged, and I put a post on Facebook, and I said, “I’ve finally met my eshet chayil… or I’ve finally met the eshet chayil.” And to this day, in fact, four years later, there are people who think her name is Chayil. They think her first name is Eshet, and last name is Chayil.

So, woman of valor, eshet chayil, who is she? What is she? So, I grew up in America, and there was this kind of 1950’s ideal. The woman stays at home, and she’s barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, if you can afford to do that, but frankly, most families can’t afford to do that today. And that’s not the ideal that’s described in the Eshet Chayil in Proverbs 31:10.

31:10 is really interesting, because it’s what’s called an acrostic poem. Acrostic is a fancy word for “the first letter of each line that represents something”, and in this case, it’s an alphabet. So, it’s an alphabetic acrostic. The first line, eshet, the first word is eshet, which is Alef. And then it’s Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Hey, Vav, so it’s the letters of the alphabet. So, why did they do that? It could be they were just trying to be cute. But in this case, it was because most people didn’t have scrolls. They couldn’t afford books. So, how do you have access to information? Well, you have to memorize it. So, how can I memorize a whole vast amount of information? One way to do that is an alphabetic acrostic. So, this poem is written according to the Alef-Bet so that young Israelite men 3,000 years ago would memorize this. And all they had to know was the Alef-bet, which most people apparently knew, and that would help them memorize the poem. If they couldn’t remember, “What’s the next line? Oh, that’s Dalet, because we just had Gimel. And then after that is Hey.”

So, what’s the poem about? The poem is about this woman who works really hard, because life is difficult, both in the ancient world and today. And she works hard and provides for her family, and she helps her husband. And he’s sitting in the gate with the other men. And what does that mean, “sitting in the gate”? That’s one of the metaphors there. Or maybe not metaphors; maybe one of the literal things. So, the gate of every city was where the elders would gather, and it wasn’t just like an opening in the wall. It was the gate house, so it was a court.

If you remember in the story of Ruth, Boaz takes Naomi to the city gate, and he proclaims to the elders, “This is my wife.” And that is what ancient marriage was; you would make a public declaration that the woman would accept. If she says, “No, I’m not!” Then it didn’t count. But he would declare, “this is my wife,” and then they would go home, and they would consummate the wedding. You didn’t get a piece of paper from the government. That didn’t exist. So, it’s a public declaration, along with consummation and then living together. So, where is he doing that? He’s doing that in the gate.

So, it says there that she’s working hard while her husband is sitting in the gate with the elders. He’s one of the judges. She’s such an amazing wife, she’s superwoman. He actually has the time, not just to toil in the fields all day, but he has the opportunity, at some point during the day, to go and sit in the gate with the elders. So, eshet chayil; how does that translate? Roughly something like “superwoman”. Now, not everybody can be a superwoman. My wife happens to be, but that is something you aspire to, and you strive to be. So, I don’t know if that answers the question.

Deborah: Yeah. So, in the book that I was reading, the women would be more like, it’s like a, “you go girl!” Like, “Yeah, you did that, and you accomplished that. You had a challenge, and you rose to the challenge. You go girl!” That kind of a thing, rather than this impossible standard that hangs over our heads of, “Yep, that’s why I’m not good enough. Yep. That’s why I can’t do that.”

Nehemia: That’s interesting. There’s this Christian idea that you have to be perfect. In the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, it says… Solomon is kneeling before God, when he dedicates the Temple in 1 Kings 8, and he says, “There is no man that does not sin,” and then he goes on to say, “and therefore God, it’s good that You’re merciful, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance.” And so, this is something to aspire to. Nobody’s perfect and nobody perfectly fulfills it, but it is something to aspire to, and the goal is not to say, “Oh, you’re so deficient because look at what eshet chayil does.” No, it’s okay. This is a model to aspire to. It isn’t a model that all cultures share.

In Afghanistan, they just passed a law that the voice of adult women is not allowed to be heard in public. That’s not the eshet chayil standard, that’s a completely alien concept. And women have to be covered so only their eyes are visible in Afghanistan, and that’s the law.

Well, in ancient Israel, you read the story of Judah and Tamar. A woman who covers her face is assumed to be a prostitute, otherwise, why is she hiding her face? She’s embarrassed that when she leaves her job, people will know who she is, that’s why she hides her face, in ancient Israel.

So, the point is, different cultures have different standards, and some men might think, “That’s the ultimate woman; the Afghani woman whom nobody sees her, nobody hears her.” That’s not the Tanakh. That’s certainly not the Proverbs 31:10 standard of eshet chayil, and the Tanakh standard is, “No, a woman should be seen. The woman who hides her face, it’s because she has something to hide. She’s doing something nefarious.”

So, there are different cultures with different standards, and I think that’s why if nobody, no human could possibly fulfill Proverbs 31 perfectly, nobody could live up to that, it does show you that this is the standard we should strive for. And there are different standards out there in the world, and it gives you, as you say, it’s a baseline. You might have something in your heart that’s wrong that you believe… and look, there’s wrong beliefs I have. Every day, I discover new things, and I say, “I was wrong. It’s wonderful. Now I’ve been corrected.” “That’s great, wow! Now I have the truth.”

One of the really powerful things about the modern world… there’s many things that are wrong with the modern world, and here’s where the post-modernist wokeism is undoing this. One of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world is this idea of the scientific method. “I have an idea, and I think I’m right about something, but I test it, and I see it’s wrong. Okay, I change it. I revise the hypothesis.” But the wokeism says, “Well, I have a lived experience, so it doesn’t matter about any evidence presented to me. That’s false, because I know in my lived experience, this is true.” That’s what led to superstition, like George Washington was killed because he was sick and they drained his blood because they thought, “You have bad humors,” they called it humors. “We’ll release those by making cuts in your arm.” Well, we know better now than that, because we’ve done experiments, and we saw that didn’t work.

And I think the beautiful thing about Scripture is, “I might have an idea and a belief. And if I see something different in Scripture, I have to revise my hypothesis.”

Deborah: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, if somebody says, “Don’t believe your lying eyes because we tell you that that Scripture is wrong,” well, I’m going to go with Scripture.

Deborah: Yeah, absolutely, every time. Yeah, because those facts of events don’t necessarily lead to truth. And I think that’s a key that we all need to keep in our minds as we go through life. Let me put your website up here, nehemiaswall.com. So, if people go to your website, what can they find?

Nehemia: So, I’ve got hundreds of hours of videos and podcasts and some old legacy things where they’re actually written, but the young people don’t read that stuff. So, they can go there. I have a podcast there called Hebrew Voices, where I interview all kinds of people. Everyone from experts in biblical studies to just regular old folks. Some really interesting things.

There’s a series I have there called The Open Door Series, which is nine of the best hours of teaching I’ve ever done. I’ve got something called the Pearls, three different series: Torah Pearls, Prophet Pearls, and Hebrew Gospel Pearls. So, check it out there, hundreds of hours of stuff on nehemiaswall.com.

Deborah: Yeah. Nehemia’s stuff is awesome. I’ve watched a bunch of the Hebrew Gospel Pearls, read some of your books. All just excellent, excellent, going deep into words and culture and history. I can attest; you definitely do your due diligence. I’m a huge fan of your work. So, go to nehemiahwall.com, check it out. Nehemia, would you mind doing a Hebrew blessing prayer to close this out?

Nehemia: Sure. So, in Numbers chapter 6, we have what’s called the Birkat Kohanim, the Priestly Blessing. And what’s interesting about it is it’s the oldest biblical passage that survived. It was on these two silver scrolls they found in Jerusalem, and it has the Priestly Blessing there. “Yevarechecha Yehovah v’yishmerecha,” “May Yehovah bless you and keep you,” “ya’er Yehovah panav elecha v’yichunecha,” “may Yehovah shine His face towards you and be gracious towards you.” “Yisa Yehovah panav elecha,” “May Yehovah lift His face towards you and give you peace.” Amen.

Deborah: Amen. Go to his website, nehemiaswall.com, check out all the amazing resources he has. And don’t forget to swipe, tap, or click over to deborahhenne.com. Follow me on social media at X, Instagram, or Facebook, DeborahHenneAuthor, and let’s walk in the Lord’s blessing until next time.

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The post Hebrew Voices #207 – Nehemia on “Sounds like Freedom” appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.